Play Guitar By Hearing - Two Chord Tune Themes

By Michael Bracken

We have seen how two chord songs templates help us play guitar by ear when we are working our children's songs, we've also applied this idea to classical music. This is just the end of the musical iceberg, the more you Practice and apply the eight bar 2 chord song templates combinations we have studied so far many more songs will are evoked.

As we dilate our study of 2 chord songs to include country music we are going to notice how a modification our early eight bar template can link an easy children's song to a number one country music hit song. Did you know you might use the very same 2 chord, eight bar song template for both these songs?

Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley and Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky Heart" use the same harmonic background, naturally the melodies of these 2 songs are different.

Here is our third 2 chord template :

| C/// | C/// | C/// | G/// |

| G/// | G/// | G/// | C/// |

and the mathematical code for this progression is ...

| 1/// | 1/// | 1/// | 5/// |

| 5/// | 5/// | 5/// | 1/// |

Realizing the similarities in the chord progressions will be a great help if you're playing at a party and somebody requests Achy Breaky Heart, it also underlines the importance of practicing and studying the children's tunes.

I am sure you have heard the phrase "that strikes a chord with me". Basically that's what will be beginning to occur for you ...chords and even complete chord progressions will start to "connect".

Guitarists who play by ear have mastered this important capability of "connected learning", by associating new material with something they already know they can remember and recall this information quickly and accurately. Our studies up to this point have been restricted to songs that use the 8 bar modules repeated for the length of the entire Piece.

Many songs use 2 chord, 8 bar modules as part of the song,the following eight bar module would work for the verse of Roy Orbison's hit song 'Blue Bayou'.

| C/// | C/// | G/// | G/// |

| G/// | G/// | C/// | C/// |

Side note : Blue Bayou's verse is comprised of sixteen bar so you need to play the 8 bar module through twice.

Attempt to work out this progression in other keys, the formula is :

| 1/// | 1/// | 5/// | 5/// |

| 5/// | 5/// | 1/// | 1/// | - 32526

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