That's a great article there, thanks for that. That bit at the end about the couch is pretty classic.
Bob + Ramblings + Theory Talk + Tabs = Happy Me
A place to talk about the music of the Grateful Dead
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By Darkstar860Re: Searching for a JBL K-120 Fri Aug 14, 2026 7:41 pm
I'm happy to see Bobby say this:
The music we played was of an intimacy that perhaps can only occur in a long, heavily improvisational relationship. We learned to intuit where each was headed, and then tried to be there with some kind of meaningful counterpoint. That required a lot of careful listening and feeling. After Jerry checked out, he didn't exactly leave: when I'm playing, I can still feel him—" Nah, nah, don't go there… yeah, there, go there." I can still hear the harmonics of what he's up to and react as I always would. I can still feel his sense of character development as the song tells its story. Maybe I should be telling someone this in a quiet room while lying on a couch, but it's real for me.
The music we played was of an intimacy that perhaps can only occur in a long, heavily improvisational relationship. We learned to intuit where each was headed, and then tried to be there with some kind of meaningful counterpoint. That required a lot of careful listening and feeling. After Jerry checked out, he didn't exactly leave: when I'm playing, I can still feel him—" Nah, nah, don't go there… yeah, there, go there." I can still hear the harmonics of what he's up to and react as I always would. I can still feel his sense of character development as the song tells its story. Maybe I should be telling someone this in a quiet room while lying on a couch, but it's real for me.
yeah, i read that article,too, and was also moved by the quote above.
defintely wouldn't have found the article if you didn't post it. thanks.
defintely wouldn't have found the article if you didn't post it. thanks.
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs and insanity for everyone, but it's always worked for me. - Hunter S. Thompson
The fool wonders. The wise man asks. - Benjamin Disraeli
The fool wonders. The wise man asks. - Benjamin Disraeli
I looked at the Weir Lesson. Didn't help me worth a damn.
With music, I'm convinced, you have to solve the puzzles for yourself. That means deriving the puzzles to begin with and then struggling through trial and error of logic to resolve them since there are many solutions.
Like a chess game, there are many good moves that lead in countless directions, all of which are powerful and commanding, but there are many more moves which really are thinly disguised blunders. When you play a song right, when it meanders with intuitive direction, and involves just the right amount of sweetness and dynamic, you know it. Just like you know with a well played chess game that there must be a checkmate within close range because you haven't made any major blunders which would weaken your approach.
With music, I'm convinced, you have to solve the puzzles for yourself. That means deriving the puzzles to begin with and then struggling through trial and error of logic to resolve them since there are many solutions.
Like a chess game, there are many good moves that lead in countless directions, all of which are powerful and commanding, but there are many more moves which really are thinly disguised blunders. When you play a song right, when it meanders with intuitive direction, and involves just the right amount of sweetness and dynamic, you know it. Just like you know with a well played chess game that there must be a checkmate within close range because you haven't made any major blunders which would weaken your approach.
I agree 100% with Old Man Down.
Bobby always impressed me as to how he can sometimes find the spot to play where no one else is playing.
I have never been a "by the book" player. Granted I had to take lessons to get the basics, but for me it was finding a place to fit in.
Sometimes its hard to do when you play solo because you have to play in a way that the melody rings through which means you have to hit allt he right notes and cords to give the song the exact color it needs. I always considered myself more of a Bobby type player than a Jerry type...
Bobby always impressed me as to how he can sometimes find the spot to play where no one else is playing.
I have never been a "by the book" player. Granted I had to take lessons to get the basics, but for me it was finding a place to fit in.
Sometimes its hard to do when you play solo because you have to play in a way that the melody rings through which means you have to hit allt he right notes and cords to give the song the exact color it needs. I always considered myself more of a Bobby type player than a Jerry type...
old man down wrote:I looked at the Weir Lesson. Didn't help me worth a damn.
With music, I'm convinced, you have to solve the puzzles for yourself.
Well I respectful disagree. Are you that damn good that you can't gain anything from the suggestions of another player, let alone Bob Weir? Of course you have to learn on your own; simply reading an article isnt going to make you a better player any more than watching someone lift weights will make you stronger. That doesn't mean advice is meaningless.
I thought the interview and examples, while obviously not an exhaustive study of his style, provided some good insight into his style/voicings, and even better: the thought processes behind his playing.
I'm not saying that the article is going to cause some kind of quantum leap in my playing, but there are certainly some new ideas I will try to incorporate. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you could probably gain similarly from it if you gave it a deeper read, stopped and considered how that relates to your own playing, and maybe played along briefly with the examples instead of just skimming over it and say "yeah yeah i already know that."
Aren't these forums all about learning from other players? I've certainly learned a lot that way. If Bob posted here on the forums would his comments also fail to be "worth a damn"?
I was hoping the article would help me. I really was.
But I looked at his version of Bertha, and it was open position for the chords. I wasn't expecting that whatsoever, and there was nothing to work off from that for me. On acoustic guitar it would be especially clumsy and necessarily slowed down. I've tried it before. But it may work fine for him. Still, I much prefer the S&R version of Bertha and it is my template for that song. After the song lost its freshness they changed the fast paced tempo on S&R and decided to employ the BAM approach. So, I'm in a time warp, gladly, on Bertha.
Then a lot of other stuff he was showing involved some finger picking coupled with pick playing. Very stylistic. Too stylistic for me. I already play mostly the way I always will, just need to keep refining my right hand flatpicking technique and further my heading of using familiarity to perfect scales incorporation.
My heading is hear something I like and try to recreate that sound and then see if I can grasp the essence that drew them there in the first place. It doesn't mean doing it exactly the way an artist does it but just some way close enough to get it done. And make it very easy if possibly because that will really help you later on, years later, in terms of technique. For him, since he got there on his own, there is no other way for him to do it. It is completely natural for him as well as easy therefore. If he were to do things the way I do things he would probably abandon my approach and go back to his own because he already has his own heading that works for him. It is one of those "to each his own" kind of things.
For these reasons it is much better to have at least a heading (what teachers or lessons can help you with if you have little direction) and then put in the practice and let trial and error work things through. You develop your own renditions in this way which are completely natural for you. Things can sound as close to originals as you want if that's what you want, though you'll probably do things differently no matter what, no two people play the same. Remember, Weir has over thirty years of non-stop trial and error experience. What he sees, the subtleties that are cool to him, are over our heads, not in concept, but in application. It's all strung together for him, so much so that even when he stumbles slightly, he can correct it into sounding good just from having been there and done that many times before. For that lesson to be really valuable, you'd probably have to have Weir as a teacher, and every week, year after year, he could reinforce concepts that he perceives on you. In this regard, then the magazine lesson would help a lot, but you wouldn't need if this were the case.
To tell the truth, probably someone took what he had said in the interview with what someone else with a video camera shot of him playing on acoustic guitar to help illustrate his point. Stuff that is completely unique to him because he IS Bob Weir, though trying to make a point as well as can be expected for such a brief moment. Together the staff then interpreted what he did to the best of their abilities (interpret: lost in translation) with the understanding that Weir would be given final approval authorization of content. They then entered it into a computer with modern software, hit a button, and that beautiful final copy turned out. I suspect that the magazine then presented that material to Weir, he was amazed at the two formats juxtaposed against each other, Standard Notation and TAB, really liked it, and signed off on it.
Do you think he laid that stuff out? No way!
It does look cool. Really cool. But every reader has to ask themselves: Does it help me, or does it sidetrack me? For me, it doesn't help me worth a damn.
But I looked at his version of Bertha, and it was open position for the chords. I wasn't expecting that whatsoever, and there was nothing to work off from that for me. On acoustic guitar it would be especially clumsy and necessarily slowed down. I've tried it before. But it may work fine for him. Still, I much prefer the S&R version of Bertha and it is my template for that song. After the song lost its freshness they changed the fast paced tempo on S&R and decided to employ the BAM approach. So, I'm in a time warp, gladly, on Bertha.
Then a lot of other stuff he was showing involved some finger picking coupled with pick playing. Very stylistic. Too stylistic for me. I already play mostly the way I always will, just need to keep refining my right hand flatpicking technique and further my heading of using familiarity to perfect scales incorporation.
My heading is hear something I like and try to recreate that sound and then see if I can grasp the essence that drew them there in the first place. It doesn't mean doing it exactly the way an artist does it but just some way close enough to get it done. And make it very easy if possibly because that will really help you later on, years later, in terms of technique. For him, since he got there on his own, there is no other way for him to do it. It is completely natural for him as well as easy therefore. If he were to do things the way I do things he would probably abandon my approach and go back to his own because he already has his own heading that works for him. It is one of those "to each his own" kind of things.
For these reasons it is much better to have at least a heading (what teachers or lessons can help you with if you have little direction) and then put in the practice and let trial and error work things through. You develop your own renditions in this way which are completely natural for you. Things can sound as close to originals as you want if that's what you want, though you'll probably do things differently no matter what, no two people play the same. Remember, Weir has over thirty years of non-stop trial and error experience. What he sees, the subtleties that are cool to him, are over our heads, not in concept, but in application. It's all strung together for him, so much so that even when he stumbles slightly, he can correct it into sounding good just from having been there and done that many times before. For that lesson to be really valuable, you'd probably have to have Weir as a teacher, and every week, year after year, he could reinforce concepts that he perceives on you. In this regard, then the magazine lesson would help a lot, but you wouldn't need if this were the case.
To tell the truth, probably someone took what he had said in the interview with what someone else with a video camera shot of him playing on acoustic guitar to help illustrate his point. Stuff that is completely unique to him because he IS Bob Weir, though trying to make a point as well as can be expected for such a brief moment. Together the staff then interpreted what he did to the best of their abilities (interpret: lost in translation) with the understanding that Weir would be given final approval authorization of content. They then entered it into a computer with modern software, hit a button, and that beautiful final copy turned out. I suspect that the magazine then presented that material to Weir, he was amazed at the two formats juxtaposed against each other, Standard Notation and TAB, really liked it, and signed off on it.
Do you think he laid that stuff out? No way!
It does look cool. Really cool. But every reader has to ask themselves: Does it help me, or does it sidetrack me? For me, it doesn't help me worth a damn.
double you tee eff
did you even read the whole bertha thing? he says he COULD play it with open strings, then he goes to show where he usually plays it (a c-shape g at the 7th fret) and other possible voicings
some of the stuff he shows, like example 9, you dont even have to use a pick and fingers to play, if youre good at muting with your right hand, you can mute the d and g strings with your index finger (which is fretting the E at the 7th fret) and just strike all the strings. hendrix does a lot of voicing in that manner i.e. villanova junction blues
imo theres a lot of good shit in this interview, all interviews should be made in this format
did you even read the whole bertha thing? he says he COULD play it with open strings, then he goes to show where he usually plays it (a c-shape g at the 7th fret) and other possible voicings
some of the stuff he shows, like example 9, you dont even have to use a pick and fingers to play, if youre good at muting with your right hand, you can mute the d and g strings with your index finger (which is fretting the E at the 7th fret) and just strike all the strings. hendrix does a lot of voicing in that manner i.e. villanova junction blues
imo theres a lot of good shit in this interview, all interviews should be made in this format
Well put vapes.
I have always had a soft spot for Heaven Help The Fool so to see how Shade of Grey moves melodically on paper is a nice thing. I never took any time to try and learn the tune but now I don't have to. Reading the chart gives a ton of insight into how Bob moves melodies on the guitar. A lot like McCoy Tyner when you really get down to it, he plays guitar as much like a piano player as a guitar player IMO.
I have always had a soft spot for Heaven Help The Fool so to see how Shade of Grey moves melodically on paper is a nice thing. I never took any time to try and learn the tune but now I don't have to. Reading the chart gives a ton of insight into how Bob moves melodies on the guitar. A lot like McCoy Tyner when you really get down to it, he plays guitar as much like a piano player as a guitar player IMO.
There are only two mantras. Yum and yuk. Mine's yum.
Printed it out, in color no less. I'll give it another look.
When I've really pulled it apart, if that even happens, I'll report back anything I learned.
Not much of a learner by textbook examples. Still believe the Nike mantra: Just do it.
When I've really pulled it apart, if that even happens, I'll report back anything I learned.
Not much of a learner by textbook examples. Still believe the Nike mantra: Just do it.