STING'S MOST COPIED RIFF - Why it's so HARD to get it right

okay so there's his riff and I'm sure everyone here it is [Music] [Music] but of course all these songs sampled the original Shape of My Heart by Sting [Music] but did you know there's so much more to this Rift than you might expect and besides that playing it absolutely right it's it's tough and that's also because there's a few downright impossible chord shapes that even the original guitarist tries to avoid when he plays it live so the song Shape of My Heart Is co-written and played by guitarist and composer Dominic Miller and apparently it started out as an exercise which considering everything really did not surprise me so let's get going so this entire riff is based on a descending Baseline in the key of F sharp minor for nine on the a string and it goes like this [Music] kind of boring right playing just the bass by itself so let's turn it into chords and the most obvious choice with these bass notes is to play a progression called the Andalusian Cadence it's a typical Spanish sounding chord progression that sounds like this [Applause] [Music] and the key of F sharp minor the original key of this song it sounds like this [Music] wait a second because we clearly hear this riff should be played with finger picking right so there's one particular picking pattern that I love it's called Travis speaking and to those who don't know it made a whole video about it you can check it out over here and this is how it sounds with these same chords [Music] meditation [Music] that sounds kind of cool actually but I want to spice this up with two new ingredients so first we add a seventh chord and secondly we add suspension so the seventh chord on the five chord of this progression so any five chord in a minor key by the way so in this case C sharp minor the last chord we can turn it into a dominant seventh chord and that resolves beautifully back to the tonic the F sharp minor lovely so I now do suspension so I'm sure we've all seen it abbreviated as sus 4 in this case so when the chord changes from the D chord to the C sharp seven one note from that D chord is held over again set C sharp seven creating a C sharp seven sus4 back to C sharp seven and then resolving by graph sharp minor so it's kind of classical right lovely anyway it sounds like this [Music] all right fine but not really great we need two new ingredients syncopation and spread try it so first spread try it's it's well we're playing bar chords right now right and whenever I can I really try to avoid playing bar Chords it's just kind of annoying actually so I'm just playing the three notes we need to form any major or minor chord so in this case just three so this is a spread Riot instead of those Triads so spread try it and then we play these spread Triads using a syncopated Rhythm so this is where the accents lie on the offbeats or even in between of the eighth note so uh seeing a patient sort of where the notes are on unexpected places so spread riots and syncopation it sounds like this [Music] there's a meditation wait a second I'm I'm forgetting about the bass because to that syncopation we need to add something we call anticipated bass this is where the bass note of the new chord actually comes in just before the new chord is played so in this case the chord changes on the first beat the downbeat and on the third beat so just before beat one and just before beat three we actually played the base out of the new chord so syncopation anticipated bass spread Triads combined sounds like this [Music] so did you catch that last core transition we dropped the anticipated base entirely and move very quickly from D to C sharp that's something that many seem to miss but still we're not close to the original and that is because we're getting something massively wrong some might have already noticed this but the chords we're playing are actually not the ones that are used in this riff so in Rigby Auto's interview with sting Dominic Miller showed us it was classical music that got him to write this riff the use of sixth chords and that's exactly what happens on the second and the third chord of this riff so when we move over from F sharp to E major on that E chord we raise the fifth so it becomes sixth so right after the F sharp minor chord to E6 and on D we do the same thing the D chord we raise the fifth to the sixth lay the Third on top oh D6 and then to C sharp sus4 it sounds great so like this [Music] there's a way more friendly way to fret these new chord shapes we now created this is a bit tricky we can adjust the same notes the same chords changing just a fingering so it sounds more smooth when we transition between the chords so F sharp minor instead of like this I play it like this E6 instead of this you play much more easy it sounds like this [Music] but there's one big problem because I think we're using the term sixth chords all wrong so there is a way more obvious way to explain these chords inversions that second and third chord actually are played as a first inversion so instead of calling this an E6 or this it's just a C sharp minor played in the first inversion C sharp minor over e the second chord instead of saying D6 is just a B minor played as a first inversion B minor over D and then we get that C sharp seven [Music] so you see in a more traditional note-tighting style called figured Bass the symbol 6 actually refers to a specific voicing of a chord or an inversion the first inversion to be more specific so I think that's what dominic Miller was talking about when he mentioned those six chords so although the guitar is playing that B minor chord as a first inversion B minor over d sting himself is actually playing the B as a bass note below it so technically this is not even an inversion at all because you always have to look at the entire composition and find the lowest note played to determine whether it's officially an inversion or not and what's even cooler right away is that now the second time around when we repeat everything the new F sharp chord is also an inversion it's on F sharp it's a d over F sharp so we move that index finger to fret seven inversion first inversion first inversion again [Music] through the C sharp seven sound so and now with sting on the bass the entire first two rounds sound like this [Music] yeah awesome so if you think this was tricky the next two chords are maybe the most painful ones ever to be played on the guitar and I remember playing this song when I was younger and I just could not pull it off but before we go there I love the acoustic guitar and that's exactly the reason why I made a guitar chords just for the acoustic it's called acoustic Adventure the starting point is this interactive map where you can explore all the awesome things the acoustic guitar has to offer from swampy finger Style Blues to strumming and all the chords you ever want to know and from that John Mayer kind percussive guitar slab 2 Travis picking if you love the acoustic I think this course is an absolute no-brainer so please check it out at acousticadventure.com so now to those two cores that haunted me at night first we go back to that B minor over D chord we've seen this before right nothing nothing spicy but but now we need to add that ring finger on Fret 5 on the high E string whilst we keep this one pressed down it it is really tricky to get this down the pinky needs to not touch the high e well also threading down that seventh fret and then the ring finger is almost on the edge it's really really tricky to get this down it's it's really tricky and what surprises me most is that actually Dominic Miller tries to avoid laying this chord when he plays it live he does this sort of variation usually and then he moves on to the new chord but one thing that I did notice is that there was this video where he played actually the chord and I heard that hi hey note ringing didn't see him fret the chord okay so look at his left hand you hear the high note but he doesn't fret it let's do it again slowly so I was like wondering what was happening so my best guess is he tuned his high E string up to an F and then he barred his index finger on the fourth fret [Music] which is so much easier but did he really do that I'm not sure I'm kind of surprised by this but let's move on let's go so you you play the chord you got it down you pull it off you're very happy excited the tricky bit is over well the next chord can ruin again for you so we move to that a chord actually that is and it is just the weirdest score I mean it's not super difficult it's an a chord played as a G major shape so it's derived from the open G chord you move it up two Frets and then your index finger bars the second fret and I don't think he's actually playing the D string in a lot of dabs you see it further down as bar which is definitely possible but I analyzed all his live footage and I never seen him play that D string so I don't think he plays it which makes it a little bit more easy you just play the index finger fret 2 on the G string and you do a hammer on from two to four and this is quite stretchy oh wow so and then you go back to wait a second because there's such an easy answer to play these difficult chord shapes and it's just using an open string the open D string it's right there and then to the a chord the open a string it's so obvious but it has a different ring to it so I guess that's why Dominic Miller doesn't do the whole open string approach but if you want to get close to the sound that's your best option continue C sharp seven and then we end with a lovely sort of focal line on D G sharp minor 11 and F sharp minor [Music] so everything together with the bass sounds like this [Music] [Applause] never say it doesn't play [Music] foreign [Music] over and over and the best thing halfway to song it all modulates down a fourth to c-sharp minor and you play exactly the same chords exactly the same thing but now everything one string up and you need to accommodate some chord shapes for the B string and the g string it sounds like this [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] and then it moves on back to C sharp minor and there you have it the full thing it is so gorgeous and to put my money where my mouth is well here's a small clip of just a few weeks back where Mary spender my friend was visiting me and I jokingly said can you sing this song and without any preparation the moment that actually ignited idea for this whole video we jumped in anyway thanks for watching check out acoustic Adventure if you love the acoustic guitar just as much as I do and I hope to see you next time have a lovely day [Music] he tells the gods as a meditation those he plays never suspect he doesn't play for the money wins he don't play foreign [Music] the hit laws of a probable outcome the numbers leader died I know that the space are the swords of the soldier I know that the clubs [Music] I know the diamonds mean money for his eyes but that's not the shape of my heart nice thank you thank you thank you what can we watch it okay so this score you can keep the guitar if it if you can play it in one time oh my God right why would you write a song with this chord

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 1,373,252

Keywords: paul davids, sting, picking, chord shapes, brilliant, riff, guitar riff, epic riff, beautiful, impossible, shape of my heart, chords, dominic, dominic miller, the police, chord, david, acoustic adventure, course, guitar lesson, lessons, guitar lessons, video, tab, tabs, top guitar riffs

Id: ygJPqQPu7DY

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023