50 Ways To Leave Your Lover | acoustic, electric
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An acoustic/electric guitar lesson on "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" by Paul Simon. It was the second single from his fourth studio album, Still Crazy After All These Years, released in 1975 and was his only number one hit as a solo artist.
This is such a cool song. The chord progression in the verse is one of the best ever IMHO. It was written by Paul Simon, but the excellent musicians that played on the track added a lot to it. The drummer was Steve Gadd, a legendary New York session player. The groove he came up with for the verses is just that, legendary! The acoustic part, played by Paul Simon, has some interesting chords that gives the song it's strong mood and flavor, but the 2 electric guitar parts played by Hugh McCracken and John Tropea add so much to the song. I go over all of these parts in detail in the video. Hugh McCracken was an excellent guitar player who played on a ton of songs throughout the seventies, including the Ram album by Paul McCartney. As I go through the parts in the lesson, I'll talk about the chorus of a song from Ram that has the same chords and almost identical picking pattern as the chorus in 50 ways. Hugh McCracken played both of these guitar parts. This is the reason I think that John Tropea is playing the left channel guitar part and Hugh McCracken is in the right channel on 50 ways. Learning the parts to this song reconfirmed to me just how much great musicians can add to a song. It's the reason they're sought after by producers and artists. They have the creativity, feel and knack for coming up with just the right parts to make an ordinary song great, and a great song amazing. I really enjoyed working on this one so I hope that you get something from the lesson and that it helps you to learn this excellent song. Cheers Andy |
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