Step Through This Window: the acoustic guitars
I am in the process of writing a series of articles about the songs on my sixth Jamendo album, In Unexpected Places. This is about the ninth track, “Step Through This Window.”
Before In Unexpected Places was published on Jamendo, I sent a preview copy of this song out to a few friends of mine. It’s one of my favorites on the album, and it has a very subtle feature — the complementary acoustic guitars. I used a certain technique to get that sound which I’ll describe here.
This song owes a lot to the “folk” tradition, at least in concept. It’s based on one of my earlier “Rhythm Method” prototypes, P35 (hosted on SoundClick, so you can listen to the original and compare).
Overall Structure
Chord wise, there are really only two parts to this song, “A” and “B”. The rhythm, pacing, and drum line change throughout, and distinguish each of the key development points.
Part A
The A part is simple — only two chords. (Quite a departure for me!) Most of the time, the chords alternate between Em and A2 for 16 bars. (A2 is my way of writing “A suspended 2nd”, meaning: take an A triad, lose the 3rd, replace it with the 2nd.)
Part B
The eight bar “chorus” is relatively simple as well:
| C | Em | C | Em |
| C | Em | D2 | D2 |
Acoustic Guitar Parts
The important thing to realize about the acoustic guitar part is that there are two guitars playing. One is played as normal; the other is played with a capo at the 5th fret. I play the same rhythms on both, but choose different chord voicings on each. This gives a “natural chorus” sound for the resulting chords.
Below, I’ve given diagrams for each of the guitar voicings using GNU Lilypond. This is the first time I’ve used Lilypond to make fingering diagrams — pretty easy, really!
Part A
On Guitar 1, I play the standard voicing for Em, and an easy voicing for A2. The trick here is the complementary line on Guitar 2 — the capo at the 5th fret lets me play a “D” shape and get the sound of G, and an “E” shape to get A.
Acoustic guitar parts for "Step Through this Window." Click image to enlarge.
Why does this work? At one point, I’m playing Em on one guitar, and G on another. These chords work together because in total, they spell Em7 (E G B D)! This is just a huge voicing (extending from that low E to the high 7th fret B).
Part B
I use the same trick on the Em chord in the B part.
Acoustic guitar parts for "Step Through this Window." Click image to enlarge.
Commonalities
Another composition principle for these two voicings is revealed by the top note played for each chord. Notice:
- Guitar 1 always has the 1st string open “E” as its highest voice. This establishes a focal point for the progression, a folksy “drone.”
- Guitar 2 always has a descending line within its chordal unit. For example, in the “A” section Em – A2, the highest note is B, then A. For the “B” section, the highest note descends as C – B – A.
