Pat Metheny - Song For The Boys

Me playing 'Song for the Boys' by Pat Metheny.

Before people point out that I'm not playing it exactly right; I know I'm not. Pat Metheny never plays it the same live as he did on the record either.

For this, I tuned my guitar as normal, except the middle two strings (3 and 4) are up an octave. After that I tuned all the strings down 2 semi tones so they are as follows (low to high): D G c f A D.

Pat Metheny actually tunes his guitar down a fifth so the strings are A D g c E A, but he has a special long guitar which will handle the low tuning much better.

Hope that helped!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• pat
• metheny
• song
• for
• the
• boys
• acoustic
• martin
• 0018
• guitar

[yonatanc25]

Hi WindsOfCreation, thank you for sharing!

I wanted to play this song myself, I don't have the music sheets though. Could you tell me what is the guitar tuning for this song? (I will play it by ear)

Thanks

-Yonatan

[WindsOfCreation]

@yonatanc25 Thanks for watching Yonatan!

I tuned my guitar as normal, except the middle two strings (3 and 4) are up an octave. I had to actually buy some new single strings (.009 and .013 I think) to do this. After that I tuned all the strings down 2 semi tones so they are as follows (low to high): D G C F A D.

Pat Metheny actually tunes his guitar down a fifth so the strings are A D G C E A, but he uses a baritone guitar for it. Any more questions let me know!

[jeanjcaron]

Did you re-tune your guitar to play this? Very nice job. I bought the tab book for this album but I can't say it's that helpful.

[WindsOfCreation]

@jeanjcaron Yeah I did re-tune. Kind of... haha. I just put some info about the tuning in the description.

I used the tab book to learn this song, but not every minute detail. I just used it to get a basic idea of what he was doing, then I filled in the gaps using my ear. That way it feels a bit more personal to me, rather than playing it straight off of the page.

[DejaVu1017]

This is really a amazing version of this song. I saw Pat Metheny in concert a few years ago and he played this, and I immediately fell in love with it, I hadn't heard it before that. Afterwards I spent such a long time trying to figure out the tuning for this song but couldn't get it for the life of me, I ended up using something like DGCGCD. Would you mind telling me what tuning you used please?

Very well done!! :D

[WindsOfCreation]

@DejaVu1017 sorry it's taken me so long to reply! I just stuck some info about the tuning in the video's description. Hope it helps. I'm so glad you liked it too, thanks!

[daeuri]

@WindsOfCreation Please correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Pat Metheny play this song on a Baritone Guitar?

[ianschneider]

The tuning is standard in proportion - one fifth low, and as noted the third and fourth strings are an octave high "baritone Nashville" tuning A-D-g-c-E-A.

Hal Leonard has a good transcription of same.

When you check pat playing this you get to see 1) how thick the 6 + 5 strings are, and 2) how he uses his thumb and gets a much deeper sound out of what are basically the same chord positions (exactly - great job on the video) as here. Thanks for this enjoyable + EDUCATIONAL video, chords clear!

[dreamsofhaegum]

It's standard tuning, but 3 &4 are restrung an octave higher than normal with lighter strings and then it's all tuned a tone down. So I've been told. I think Pat has it tuned lower though.

[druuuxfr]

Awesome !

What tuning do you use ?