BRAD PAISLEY

first album, Who Needs Pictures, was released in 1999 and gave him his first number one country single with the beautiful ballad, We Danced.

Country superstar Brad Paisley was born on October 28, 1972 in Glen Dale, West Virginia and began learning guitar aged eight. His first performances were in the local church and by his early teens he was writing his own music. Soon he was performing regularly and opening for major acts like Ricky Skaggs and George Jones. Unlike many musicians, his entrance to the business followed a planned trajectory - he studied music business in college and worked as an intern at Atlantic Records before signing a publishing contract with EMI just a week after leaving college. His

Paisley’s high-octane electric style has been covered many times but his skills as an acoustic part writer and accompanist are equal to his electric chops. His acoustic playing can be solid strumming accompaniment or ferocious lead work. For this study I’ve focused on his colourful approach to playing through standard chord progressions and this piece examines how he uses chord voicings to create a backdrop to his hit ballads. You can fingerpick this one or use a pick - Brad will often use a plectrum when playing parts like these. The main technique here is ‘chord enrichment’ which means taking standard, ‘obvious’ chords and changing or adding a few notes to them to make more colourful and ‘richer’.

NEXT MONTH Stuart checks out top Nashville musician and writer, Chris Stapleton

Playing Brad Paisley Style

[Bars 1-16] A simple device for getting more colour from chords is to maintain a ‘pedal note’ against them, in this case the open fourth string is played against both the D chords in the first bar and the A in the second bar. Depending on what the rest of the band is doing, the open fourth string in the second bar either gives you an A/D chord or a Dmaj9 (no 3rd). On guitar this works especially well with triads on the top three strings like these.

[Bars 17-32] Descending bass lines are a songwriter’s preference that Paisley often employs. Using a bassline to descend from the I chord to the V chord is common and in this example that means moving from D (I) to A (V). Using chord inversions makes the bassline smooth, so in bar 21 you move from a D chord with the root as bass note to the A in first inversion with a C# as the bass note, giving an ultra-smooth bass line (known as voice leading).