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Here is a ragtimey feel piece, loosely based on Jimmy Buffet's 'Pencil Thin Moustache'. He certainly didn't come up with the progression or even the approach; this is kind of the 'default' picking progression for hundreds of other tunes and only the details vary for each. Thanks to Will who suggested at the forum that I do a lesson for this kind of playing.
To play this style properly, you really should use at least a thumb pick, and even finger picks. By properly, I mean to really get that authentic ragtime sound.
The chord progression uses a lot of 'majorized' minors, in other words the related chords that, in this key, are normally minor have been changed to major. This is purely up to the composer. The 7 related chords of any key are by no means the only chords that will sound good. They are the 'pure' diatonic chords, but there is no rule which says you must stick exclusively to them when composing a piece of music. I have mentioned before that majorizing the minors is the most common deviation from the pure, and is particularly common in this kind of jazzy, bluesy progression.
Let's first look at the chord progression as roman numerals, picking it up at bar 2:
| I - III7 - | VI7 - - - | II - V7 | I - vi V7 | I - III7 - | VI7 - - - | II7 - - - | V7 - vi -| bviidim - V7 - |
| I - - - | I7 - - - | IV - - - | #V7 - - - | I - III7 - | VI7 - - - | II - V7 | I - - - |
Apart from the vi which comes up twice as a little passing chord, and the one diminished, all the rest are major, and most of them are dominant sevenths. Again, this is very common in this genre. So, in the key of G which this is in, here is the basic chord chart:
| G - B 7 - | E 7 - - - | A - D 7 | G - Em D/F# 7 | G - B 7 - | E 7 - - - | A 7 - - - | D 7 - Em -| F dim - D 7 - |
| G - - - | G 7 - - - | C - - - | D# 7 - - - | G - B 7 - | E7 - - - | A - D 7 | G - - - |
The version I played is faithfully tabbed out below but you will hear that the midi is a little wonky in parts. It's still good enough to practice along to. This kind of picking is by no means easy, in fact I needed quite a few run through's myself to get a take that sounded settled in. You'll find that those who play this ragtime feel well are those who specialize in it. The more you do it, the better you get at it, of that there is no doubt. The triplet lilt is the hard to thing to get flowing.
One of the things that propels it all along is the way some of the notes are anticipated, for example that last note of bar 2 , which is a G#, in fact belongs to the E7 chord which follows in the next bar. It's the 3 of E7, and pops in to existence before the chord itself arrives. It's a neat trick and one that kind of kicks the tune along.
Full speed midi | Half speed midi | Guitar-Pro file | Mp3 file
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The movies in the paid downloadable versions come in Windows Media Video format with all the Start-Stop-Pause-RW-FF buttons. Click on the movie to find out what you'll get when you buy this lesson. |
The original version of Pencil Thin Moustache was done in the key of D. After much experimenting with voicings and positions, I decided that the best way to get the same sort of vibe was to play it in G, but to capo at the seventh fret. The original is in fact two guitars playing off each other, and I'm sure one of them is indeed playing G shapes ( a very 'open' ringing key because of all the open strings that come into play) and doing so capoed at the seventh fret. Capos are very handy and should not be frowned upon. Some seem to think it's cheating! What nonsense. Any way you can think of to make the music coming out of your guitar sound good is OK. Imagine for example learning a song perfectly in the key of G, and your singer demanding that he/she prefers G#. To try and play any piece of guitar music in the key of G# would be ridiculous for anyone except perhaps Tommy Emmanuel ... and even he would say "hang on mate, let me whack me capo on". Capos are good.
The second movie shows a brief example of the very same thing I play in G, without the capo, in D with the capo. For those who are still unfamiliar with using capos, it's important to understand that I'm playing exactly the same thing as I am in the first movie, but I playing it just in front of the capo, pretending that the capo is the nut. You can hear how bright and crisp sounding it is when you play way up the neck like that.
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