[abspatz]

Hey guys. I've recently started playing with some friends and have taken on the roll of Bobby. Most of the licks I want I can find online in one place or another, with the exception of Fire and IKYR.

Fire--I play acoustic. My arm gets damn tired playing the same B and A chords at the 7th and 5th frets. Any tips on other things to do during this song to spice things up? I know the sliding riff that is on JDark's site.

Rider--this is a great song, that I'd love to make more interesting. I know the open chords, obviously, and can also play it all around the 5th/7th frets, but its still about the same. What are most of the slides that Bobby does? Any secrets for playing his parts on this song? Thanks!!

[amyjared]

I am by no means a Bobby expert, but I'll throw a few things out. He often played inverted chords, and chords off of the open "d" shape up the neck. He also played "parts" of chords, since there was so much going on. If you're holding down the rhythm on acoustic, you probably need to play the full chords, but if there are other things going on, you can try some of these.
For instance, in Fire, play the A as a "D" shape at the 9th fret and a B two frets up on the 11th. Or play an A on the 14th fret and a B on the 16th, just the 3 strings that form the "A" shape. And just play "stabs" instead of a constant rhythm. Try these shapes for Rider as well. Hope that gets you started...

[abspatz]

Thanks for the reply.

I've actually learned quite a bit about the guitar by looking at Bobby's playing. Like you said...partial chords are a pretty cool tool to use. One of my favorites is the minor--I learned A minor at the 9th fret using the 2, 3, and 4 strings of the "c" form, flatting the 3rd. Its a great chord and sounds real nice when you slide into it from a half-step down (ala Miss 1/2).

What exactly is an inverted chord? Is this something I should read up on?

With the open D form at the higher parts of the neck....I'm not really getting the sound I want. I'm really looking for the slides he does on IKYR from Europe '72. Anybody have ideas on that?

[tigerstrat]

Well, FOTM is an ensemble percussion piece, and imho the 6-player depth of the woven rhythmic interplay is what makes it musically interesting. I am on the fence about even performing it in a 5pc band with only a single drummer. Acoustic can't be directly compared, but I would think you would want to have at least one other player to bounce off of in interesting configurations.

[Pete B.]

Here's my shchtick on IKYR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7vYrq0z ... annel_page

The CAGED shchtick is pretty Bobby-ish:
This link has a good graphic (see below) for overlaying chord-shape positions as a means of making partials and inverted chords (Root-3rd-5th triad becomes 5th-3rd-root triad when inverted):
http://www.cagedguitarsystem.net/