Nick Drake Package
What's included
- All tab
- Chords
- Chart
- Guitar pro files
$29.96
Full Lifetime Access to this package
Nick Drake was a highly talented singer/songwriter who released three albums in the early 1970s, that never really captured an audience or garnered much critical appeal. A retrospective release in 1979, Fruit Tree brought his music to a bigger audience but unfortunately, he had passed away 5 years earlier, in 1974. His songs frequently had a dark look at life, but many of them featured very complex fingerpicking accompaniments and quite a few alternate tunings. This package features five very diverse songs that will challenge most intermediate guitar students.
Lessons
Lesson 1: Things Behind The Sun
Things Behind The Sun is another great acoustic song from Nick Drake’s Pink Moon album. Like many of his songs, it uses jus a few chord shapes but pretty technical and complex picking.
The song is played in standard tuning with a capo at the fourth fret. The lesson includes detailed tab and a lyrics page, although singing the tune is not really addressed.Lesson 2: Road
This tune, from Nick Drake’s 1972 album Pink Moon, is another classic example of Nick’s ability to create a complex accompaniment out of a couple simple themes and ideas. There are only three short sections and they are all arpeggios but accurate execution of them will be very challenging to most guitar players.
Road is done in a slightly altered tuning, dropping the G string down to E, using a capo at the second fret. Nick also uses random variations in the filler and melody notes so a note-by-note copy is not really addressed in this lesson. There is tab to most of what he played but the lesson encourages getting a feel for the melody notes and randomly arranging the filler notes each time you play the song.Lesson 3: Pink Moon - Guitar Lesson
Pink Moon is the song that finally helped put Nick Drake on the musical map. This incredibly talented and creative artist never found much of an audience during his short life but his songs need to be heard by everyone today. The song is played in a C ‘Cluster’ Tuning (C G C F C E) and the lesson is presented in a very different way from all of our previous lessons- Watch, Listen, & Follow The Map.Lesson 4: River Man
The second song on Nick Drake’s album Five Leaves Left, River Man is a very dark and moody piece due to a combination of many different elements. It uses unusual chords (in standard tuning), an unusual time signature, a free form melody with its own rhythm not at all connected to the rhythm of the harmony, and profound and provocative lyrics to weave a very complex tapestry of sound and emotions. I may have over rated the difficulty but I hope you enjoy this lesson immensely.Lesson 5: Time Has Told Me
Nick Drakes first album, Five Leaves Left came out in 1969. It had many fascinating acoustic guitar songs, leading off with Time Has Told Me. It is played in standard tuning with a capo at the third fret and features some of his gentle, free form fingerstyle playing. This lesson goes over some accompaniment techniques as well as ideas on finding difficult-to-hit vocal phrases.Lesson 6: One Of These Things First
One Of These Things First is another classic example of Nick Drake's guitar mastery and songwriting prowess. It was part of his second album, Bryter Layter, released in 1970. It is done in Open E Tuning, which is done in Open D with a capo at the second fret.
Like many of his tunes, the left hand is pretty basic but the right hand requires very fast arpeggio-type picking using the thumb and three fingers (p-i-m-a). It is a very repetitive pattern but the is an instrumental interlude that raises the level of difficulty significantly. The lesson goes over all of these but offers a suggestion of simplifying the interlude a bit.