The Guitar Player's Resource
"Free Ride" was originally played by Nick Drake in the, I guess, CGCFCE tuning. As I didn't want to totaly retune my guitar on stage or in the studio for every song I choose an easier tuning which became, after some experimentation, this one: D B D G B E
Just tune the A string to B and the lower the E string to D I came up with the folowing intro and re-harmonization of this beautiful tune.
Mind your steps with the 5/8 bar!
I reharmonized the melody in the first part in sixths or fourths over an open B string drone and, as I wanted to avoid big stretches in the second part, the 6th string was retuned to D so that I could play the F# on the 4th fret. I have written the lyrics of the first verse under the tabs.
I improvised over the folowing repeated picking pattern in B
Then I used a small middle part to make my solo interesting which was something like this:
Here's a fragment of the solo I did using an Eastern flavored scale.
Have fun.
Gilbert Isbin, a guitarist from Belgium, favors dynamic improvisations over a mixture of expressive ambient, meditative lines and world music.
His latest project is "Red Wine", highlighting all the nuances and subtleties in Isbin's playing.
