The Guitar Magazine – September 2019

D

avid Bowie was never a virtuoso

guitarist, but he didn't need to be.

That said, he was a very competent

rhythm player and played acoustic

guitar in the background of many of the

classic early tracks. He also frequently

played the iconic intro parts.

Figure 1 is typical of the sort of thing

you’d hear on the Hunky Dory album and

is by no means easy to play. The difficulty

stems from the need to leave the open first

(high E) string ringing in both chords. This

means using fingers two, three and four

at the third fret in the first chord and

then the thumb over the sixth string in

the second chord. If you’re going for that

Bowie vibe when writing songs, don’t forget

that Bowie seldom used material from his

verses and choruses for his intros – we think

a G minor would work well to start off a

verse after this.

Another challenge here is that we are

at the lowest end of the guitar, where the

frets are furthest apart and the nut is trying

to hold up the strings that we are trying to

press down. It's also important to use the

tip of the first finger to mute the sixth (low

E) string in the B♭ chord – another tricky

aspect of this sequence. All these examples

are meant to be played with the pick, and

preferably on acoustic; in figure 1, try a

‘one-and-two-and-a’ rhythm and make the

most of the dissonance provided by the

open first (high E) string.

Moving on to figure 2, the A major chord

is essentially the same shape as the Fmaj7

chord in figure 1, except that it omits the

A string, which can be muted using the

tip of the third finger. Once again, we

have the open E string, but this time it

doubles the note which is already at the

top of the chord.

This same open string also gives us an

added ninth in the D minor chord. The

thumb remains where it is, holding down

the note A on the low E string and creating

the slash chord ‘D minor added ninth with

A bass’. Repeat these two chords as often as

you like and then use the F major chord to

climb out of the sequence before stopping

dead on the plain D minor barre chord and

pausing for four beats before repeating the

whole pattern.

Following on from Part One of

our look at some classic Bowie

chord sequences, we add strange

intros and adapt some piano

parts for guitar...

©

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CHORD CLINIC
HOW TO PLAY
DAVID BOWIE-STYLE CHORDS PART TWO
WORDS ROD FOGG
CHORD CLINIC
GUITAR MAGAZINE 141