Tunes in Open G

To get you started in playing in Open G, I've provided some example music to try.  I've tried to choose tunes with different levels of difficulty so that there will be something can try.  

The first tune is a tune called "Questionable Rag" written by Mike Martin.  This tune is provided by permission from Steve McWilliam's web site. 

The second tune is a composition of mine that has been on this site from its beginning called "SummerTree".  The last tune is more difficult than the others and was arranged by me as an instrumental break to an old Gilbert O'Sullivan pop tune "Alone Again (Naturally)".

Questionable Rag by Mike C. Martin

This delightful little tune uses a lot of open chord forms characteristic of open tunings and is quite fun to play.  First print out the TAB so you can see what's being played, then listen to how its played to hear how it's suppose to sound (a ragtime bounce).

Questionable Rag (MP3)

Tablature (48k)

Playing Notes

The only real tricky parts of this tune, and also one of the things that make it sound so appealing is the moving bass lines and turnarounds.   The first turnaround is in measure 15.   This is very characteristic of ragtime and has both the bass and melody moving together both on and off the beat.  The second turnaround to look at is measures 24-25.    The first measure is a single note arpeggio followed in the next measure by a moving bass line over the melody.  This bass line leads into the C chords in the next measure and provides that ragtime feeling to the piece.  Even though these may be a little tough for those of you just starting out, once you get them down the rest of the piece should come pretty easy.

The chords in this tune, like many open tuning pieces don't use standard chord forms.  This tune makes extensive use of maj6 and add4 chords.   The progression is interesting in that it starts with a V chord (Dmaj) and moves to the tonic (Gmaj) in the second measure.      Then it adds an interesting flavor by putting a IIadd4 chords (Aadd4) between the tonic which sets the tone of the whole piece.   Then it eventually moves to the V chord to allow it to resolve itself back to the G tonic.   Here is a list of the chords used:

Chord Number	I	II	IV	IV	V	V
Chord Name	Gmaj	Aadd4	Cmaj	Cmaj6	Dmaj	Dmaj6

I think you'll find this tune fun to play and hat's off to Mike Martin for writing such a wonderful piece.

Alone Again (Naturally)

This rather difficult tune uses a lot of complicated fingerings to obtain an arrangement that would otherwise be a very difficult piece to arrange as an instrumental.  First print out the TAB so you can see what's being played, then listen to how its played to hear how it's suppose to sound (a ragtime bounce).