Thursday, April 07, 2011

Guitar Workshop: “Heading for Nowhere”

We featured the band from Victoria, British Columbia, known as Jets Overhead, in a piece last August. This week for our Guitar Workshop, we're going to show how their hit "Heading for Nowhere" is played on rhythm guitar, featuring frontman Adam Kittredge. Our first clip is the "official" music video featuring the entire band.

This second clip is an acoustic rendition, with one Kittredge on guitar, backed by co-vocalist Antonia Freybe-Smith, on the CBC-TV series Q. The success of "unplugged" performances of otherwise "plugged-in" bands, shows how the song itself stands out on its own, free of the instrumentation and scale of production that can fill an arena, but is strictly overkill for an intimate setting.

As part of the "how-to" segment of the show, Kitteredge demonstrates how to play the song. This is suitable for the advanced beginner, someone who knows the basic barre chords, and isn't afraid to venture up the neck with them. It doesn't hurt to be able to sing either. Add the bass player doing the continuous eighth notes, a snare drum with a brush to round out the rhythm, and you have one more staple for the coffeehouse circuit.
 

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