Guitar by Randy Buckner

Tuesday, September 10, 2019 by Randy Buckner | Method Books

The Songs

Nine songs from Atkins' album, "Chet Atkins Goes to the Movies," were transcribed for this book:

"Emily" "Charade" "Solace" "The Entertainer" "A Man and a Woman" "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" "Everybody's Talkin" "Somewhere My Love" and "Merrily We Roll Along."

No Tab

When Knowles initially discussed the project with the editors at Guitar Player, the subject of tablature came up. The editors were west coast jazz guys, and they thought nobody would use tab. They didn't realize Stefan Grossman had been using it for years in his books.

As soon as Knowles realized tab wasn't going to be used - and knowing notation alone would not reveal chord shapes and positions - he decided to use chord diagrams and performance notes to explain the songs.

Knowles explained, "The analytical part of me [devised] the whole thing of numbering each line of music" to correspond with the chord diagrams. This made it easier to match a chord diagram with a specific point in the music.

Performance Notes

Knowles noticed - while teaching students a new piece of music - "over half of [the song] contained things they already knew how to do." So the idea behind the performance notes was Knowles, as the teacher, pointing out difficult passages of the music to the student via the page.

Charade

Asked which songs were the most difficult to transcribe, Knowles replied "Over the Rainbow" because of the harmonics, and "Charade" because of the flanger Atkins used on the recording.

Knowles often fields questions about "Charade." Why? Because the transcription doesn't match the recording. Well, the notes are right, the music is just out of sequence.

As Knowles explained, "I had printed some staff paper that had seven lines," and after Guitar Player received the manuscript , they cut it "to where it had the right number of lines per page." During the process of pasting the manuscript, the first two pages of "Charade" were switched.

Looking at the transcription, the first seven lines are page two, the next seven are page one, and the remaining lines are page three. So, "Charade" actually starts on the third line down on page 24, where it says 4/4.

Final Thoughts

In the world of fingerstyle guitar, "Chet Atkins Note-for-Note" is a landmark book. No book before it explained Chet's style so simply - and so detailed - that even a middle-school guitar fanatic in Springfield, Mo. could easily learn his style of playing. The songs themselves are individual lessons on how to play like Atkins.

The look of the music notation is very artistic. When Knowles said it was written in calligraphy with a fountain pen - and the aid of bottles of "White Out" - I was impressed even more.

Unfortunately, there are no plans to publish the book again. Knowles doesn't know who owns the rights.

However, Knowles has re-arranged some of the songs, and published them in his quarterly magazine. Maybe someday, whoever owns the rights will understand the goldmine they have, and publish the book for a new generation of thumbpickers to study.

Recently, as I played through the songs again - it felt as if I was meeting up with a group of old friends.

Until next time ~

Randy Buckner.
Hoover Music Co.
Springfield, Mo.
www.bucknerguitar.us

Tweet