Ten Years Gone: Opening Chord Figure

Ten Years Gone starts off with a lovely little chord figure that transitions between a traditional  “A” chord triad shape (Fig. 1.) and the next chord (we will leave that chord unnamed here).  A traditional “A” chord is a difficult guitar chord to finger for a lot of players because it can be hard to get three fingers side-by-side on the same fret across the three strings cleanly.  For this reason most players have the habit of fretting the chord with a quick finger bar across three strings with the open low “A” string as the root note (Fig. 2.)  What gets lost here when using a finger bar is the ability to play around with suspensions inside the chord or letting the high “E” string ring open (it is the 5th of the chord).

Ten Years Gone forces you to reckon with this because Jimmy is doing all kinds of subtle finger lifts to get ringing suspensions or open strings as he plays and transitions between the various chords and figures.  There are several approaches that will allow you to do this – each having their own cost/benefit. I’m going to suggest this tricky but very doable fingering  as illustrated in Fig. 3. because I find it gives you the cleanest transitions between the chords so those open strings ring out and common notes are left to sustain as you pass from chord shape to chord shape.

Fig. 3.

Pay close attention to the fingering itself. You’ll see that the Index finger (the 1) stays on the C# while the middle (2) and ring (3) fingers move up a single fret each. This minimizes overall hand movement and you’ll see how this comes to play as you learn the song. It takes some practice to work with this new shape  – you’ll note the slightly staggered way in which your fingers are positioned on the fret board when you grab that “A” chord (also shown on the diagram) – but keep working at it and you’ll soon get it in your muscle memory (particularly for players with bigger hands and narrow guitar necks.) Good luck!

P.S. — for an excellent little tutorial on this opening figure and fingering, check out this video by by NYC Guitar School‘s Coby. It’s a perfect little lesson that just covers this aspect of the song to get you started.

Feature Photo Credit: 音と育つ, by maki ataca, flickr, by CC BY-NC-ND 2.0