Shape Of My Heart by Sting - Dominic Miller - acoustic
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An acoustic guitar lesson on how to play "Shape Of My Heart" by Sting, co-written by Dominic Miller who also plays the great guitar parts. It's from the "Ten Summoner's Tales" album released on March 9th, 1993.
Here's a quote from Dominic Miller on how the song came about: "Miller was just warming up his fingers by playing Chopin-style chords on the guitar when he happened to catch Sting's ear. He explained in a 2018 interview at Jazzklub Divino in Denmark: "I was just playing that in front of the fireplace at Sting's house in England and he said, 'What's that?' 'Oh, it's nothing, it's just a little movement.' He said, 'That's a song.' I went, 'Really? Are you kidding me?' Then ten minutes later we went into the studio - 'cause we were at his studio anyway in his lake house - and we put a drum machine up, just the two of us. And then he went out in the garden for a walk and he came back with those lyrics. And so we recorded it! It was just an acoustic guitar and it was finished in one day - it was written in one day and recorded." He continued: "It's one of those nice moments that happen in your life when things just fall on top of each other naturally, like nature. It's not always like that... Sting's genius with lyrics made it into a very, very ambiguous kind of narrative, which really goes well with that kind of arpeggio, with those Chopin-esque chords, you know? That Chopin-esque harmony kind of lends itself to those kind of lyrics, with Sting's timbre of his voice and the sound of my guitar and just a little bit of a groove. It was the perfect storm." Dominic Miller is a great guitarist. His playing is classically oriented and you can see that with this song. A few of the chords are really difficult and it'll take some time to develop the muscle memory to be able to play them properly. I based my demo off of this video and added a drum track and bass. If you watch it to the end you can't help notice that the last chord is missing! Luckily there's this video which includes the last chord! I really like the ending in the live video, but that last chord is tough. Dominic Miller is playing a short scale guitar in that video so that helps, but if you're playing on a standard scale guitar and have smaller hands it's pretty well impossible to play. I'll show you a way you can play it with a bit of cheating! The good news with the live version is that the hardest chord in the song is only played once in the intro, after that it's a modified chord that's a lot easier to play. This is a great one to learn. It's a workout for the fingers with some big stretches on some of the chords and some oddball shapes. It's like the finger Olympics. Learning it will improve your dexterity and stretch out your hand and give you some insight into what a great guitarist Dominic Miller is! I hope that you get something from the video. Cheers Andy |
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