Viva La Vida by Coldplay / Chris Martin | rhythm
An acoustic guitar lesson on how to play "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay. This lesson is based around the acoustic guitar version played by Chris Martin at the hurricane Sandy relief concert at Madison Square Gardens on 12.12. 2012.
IMHO this is one of the best songs that Coldplay's done. The production by Brian Eno on the original version is off the charts with all of the counter melodies and orchestrations. I also think it has an excellent lyric. The problem is that when you play it on acoustic guitar using bar chords or using a capo and playing it in G, it sounds sorta dead. In this live version Chris Martin is playing in an open tuning. It's not the greatest performance but it opens up the question of how is he doing that and what is the tuning? After a lot of muckin' around I discovered the tuning and figured out what chords he's playing, as well as adding a few embellishments. I go over all of this in the lesson. In my demo I also played the melody. I didn't plan on doing that at first but thought I'd give it a try. I put a ton of reverb on the guitar and actually kind of liked the way it came out.
It has a kind of Jesse Cook vibe about it I think. The song is just four chords but the the different voicings in this tuning really open it up. The progression is a 4-5-1-6. Coldplay like to start songs on chords other than the one chord. Like The Scientist which is a 6-4-1. It makes for music that sounds familiar, but also kind of different. They're very clever in their songwriting and always comes up with really simple but interesting tunes. It's a fun song to play and the guitar sounds amazing in this tuning. I had a blast working on all of this as this is one of my all time favorite songs. I hope you get something from the videos. Cheers Andy |
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