[lunchbox]

Hello there family. I could really use some help with the solo for box of rain. Jdarks tab confuses me, seems like he has to much going on. Any help/a tab would be so very kind/ appreciated!
Thank you!

[Adam Deckard]

I think that solo was played by garcia's old bluegrass buddy David Nelson. I Think another dude came in and played bass while Phil lesh played acoustic guitar. The Solo interested me too because I could not understand how dude was making his guitar sound like that until I found out about a little thing called a "b-bender" guitar made by fender which has a "whammy bar" type deal built into the strap so that when the guitarist tilts his guitar the strap actually bends the b string in order to achieve that unique sound! I think alot of country players use these guitars for "chickin pickin" stuff lol. Try watching some Grateful Dead performances on youtube and see if garcia plays that solo, i bet he doesnt!

[lunchbox]

Thanks for your reply adam! The solo was indeed played by David Nelson using a B-bender fender on the studio version. I think Garcia plays it live, not entirely sure as I cant find a video of his hands during that song.
Its frustrating for those trying to learn it because of that guitar haha, but I cant complain it adds to the richness of the Dead's sound. I am curious as to wether or not it can be played with out it?! Im sure it can. Maybe thats why jdarks tab is the way it is?

[rugger]

I've recently found a new tool to help learn songs or guitar parts/solos. It's a piece of software called Transcribe! (there are others out there, but this is the only one I have experience with) that allows you to loop any number of measures you like and slow down the tempo without affecting the pitch of the song. Another nice feature is the eq that helps bring forward or send back certain frequencies/instruments in the mix. The rest is all your ears. I've made a vow to never look at tab again--it's a crutch. Plus it's usually wrong!

I have decent ears but I can still struggle with some stuff. I've found that by looping a measure over and over until it's ingrained in my head to the point that I can sing/hum the part accurately makes "finding" the notes on the fretboard much easier. I've been surprising myself lately. Stuff that I would get reasonably close before, I'm now getting near note perfect.

Transcribe! or any slow down software is also a great practice tool. Got a difficult part that's been vexing you? Loop it and slow it down to a speed you can play it perfectly and gradually up the tempo as you get it down.

Point in all of this is that you can transcribe that solo yourself and can get far more benefit out of that process than by trying to memorize Darks' tab.

john in san diego