Poetry Man - Phoebe Snow - Guitar Lessonby Phoebe Snow

In 1974 Phoebe Snow came onto the music scene with her platinum selling debut album. Poetry Man went into the Billboard Top 100 in 1975 and earned her a Grammy nomination. The song is done in Dropped D Tuning, using standard alternating bass fingerpicking, but featuring some unusual chord changes, almost minimalist with a single note moving chromatically to alter the chord.

She plays the guitar part with a lot of flexibility so a note-for note arrangement is not a good way to approach this song. The tab does show some exact ways to get her sound but improvising and changing around the picking and embellishments is encouraged.

The same can be said of the vocals as she would generally improvise freely in a jazzy manner.