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Beat The Retreat Chords by Richard Thompson

Beat The Retreat chords by Richard Thompson

Guitar chords with lyrics

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!
_____________________________________________________________________________
🎸
Accuracy Rating: - Votes: -
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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