C'est La Vie by Emerson, Lake & Palmer | acoustic
An acoustic guitar lesson on how to play "C'est La Vie” by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, written by Greg Lake, from their 1977 album "The Works - Volume 1."
Another fantastic Greg Lake song and one that I've been meaning to do a lesson on for a while. Like a lot of his acoustic numbers, this one is all arpeggios, some are fairly easy, but the ones in the instrumental section are really hard to play and will take even experienced guitarists some time to get down. Greg Lake was a master at this technique and while he made it look and sound easy, it's actually very difficult. The trick is to try to have a consistent attack on every note and not to drag or rush. I have to admit I was guilty of both of those in my demo at the start of the video!
In the later stages of his career, he skipped the instrumental section completely, and if he did play it, he'd play a simplified version.
The verses and chorus are more about what the right hand is doing as there aren't that many changes, but the instrumental section is a real workout on both hands. Not only are some of the chords super tough, but the picking speed is also hard to keep up to.
There are a lot of very interesting chords in this one. Greg had a real knack for mystical sounding chords. He used a lot of them in both "From The Beginning" and "Still You Turn Me On" as well.
It was originally played on a twelve string so in my demo I tracked the main guitar part with a Nashville tuned guitar to emulate the twelve string sound. Nashville tuning is more to do with the strings than it does the tuning. It's the high strings of a twelve string set tuned to standard but with the low E, A, D, and G strings up an octave. Now days you can buy a Nashville High Strung set of strings. It has just the six strings you need.
I had a lot of fun learning the song and recording the demo. I hope you enjoy the video and playing this great tune.
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