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BEAT THE RETREAT by Richard Thompson from Pour Down Like Silver or Disk B of Watching the Dark Chorded by Jay Verkuilen (jayv@uiuc.edu). Comments, corrections, etc., welcome. The song is in C mixolydian (C-D-D-F-G-A-Bb), but sometimes a B shows up. I haven't bothered to TAB it out since it really wouldn't help with the whole feel of the song, and is kind of against Richard's whole philosophy anyway-- he doesn't play anything the same way twice. It's better to improvise within the feel of the song, which is slow, solemn, and bluesy, than to learn exactly what he plays. He said exactly that on his Homespun Lesson Tape, so I don't feel this is a stretch of logic! _____________________________________________________________________________ Tuning: CGDGBE, low to high Chords are:
C: o-o-2-o-1-0 Cadd4: o-o-3-o-1-o G5: x-o-o-o-3-3 a: x-2-2-2-1-o C Cadd4 G5 Beat .. C Cadd4 G5 Beat .. a C I'm .. a C I'm .. a C I'm .. G5 C Cadd4 I'm .. Trailing .. Trailing .. This .. This .. This .. I'm .. [instrumental over same chords as verse] Follow .. Follow .. There .. There .. There .. I'm .. You can play the song quite adequately in standard, but you won't get the same bass feel. Also, Richard frequently plays octave bass runs like: E_______________________________ B_______________________________ G___0___2-sl-3-sl-2_____________ D_______________________________ G___0___2-sl-3-sl-2_____________ C_______________________________ These are _much_ easier when you have the octave G strings as open, since you can damp out the B string more easily. (Actually, I was led to using this tuning because I heard these, tried to play them in standard, and was disappointed. :) -- Jay Verkuilen jayv@uiuc.edu "A human society without conflict would be a society not of friends, but of ants." --Sir Karl Popper, _Unended Quest_
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