Songs of a Different Stripe

Songs I am butchering this week:

• "Little Ghost"


• "You've Got Her in Your Pocket"


• "Happy Birthday"

Two of these are by the White Stripes—can you guess which ones? We recently watched The White Stripes: Under the Great White Northern Lights (2009), a rockumentary by Emmett Malloy about this controversial duo's 2007 Canadian tour. If you have any affinity for their music at all, you'll enjoy this 90-minute glimpse into their life on the road. The majority of the film showcases the songs played at various gigs, at venues that range from tiny bars and outdoor courtyards to giant concert halls.

It's fun, and it's disturbing. The alleged brother-and-sister team (Jack White on guitar and vocals; Meg White on drums) has an excellent back and forth on stage, where little nods of the head and juts of the guitar neck serve as shorthand to keep them in sync. But off-stage, the duo barely makes eye contact. The film partially explains this by highlighting Meg White's reserved personality throughout, both in direct interviews and in stolen moments. No matter the situation, she's quiet and reserved—so quiet, in fact, that all of her comments are subtitled.

With outgoing, talkative Jack as the frontman, the pairing with Meg is odd, and it makes for some uncomfortable moments. It's hard to know what's really going on with these two—who were actually once married to each other, although Malloy sticks with Jack's brother-and-sister explanation—and there are several points in the film where I wondered why Meg sticks with it. It seems like unending purgatory for her. Then again, it's hard to say. To paraphrase one of Jack's comments in the film: Nothing is what it seems with the White Stripes.

So, the film inspired me to learn a couple of tunes. This is a challenge, of course, because so many of their songs are made for the electric guitar and just don't translate that well to acoustic. I stumbled upon a nice arrangement of "You've Got Her in Your Pocket," which has a haunting, lilting melody with terribly misogynistic lyrics. Of course, I can't help but wonder now if Meg is the one in the pocket with "no way out"?

To make up for my betrayal of womankind by playing that song at all, I'm also working on "Little Ghost," which is a fun, fast-paced tale about a romance between a boy and his girl ghost. The line "The moment that I met her/I did not expect a specter" is only one of the reasons I love the White Stripes. My guitar-playing friends have pooh-poohed their guitar arrangements, but I defy them to dis their lyrics!

All Strung Out

And I want to play my guitar, but my guitar is out of tune.
—Antsy Pants

Tuning a guitar is the first lesson any novice player learns. In college, I was taught to tune by ear, but I'm still not very good at it. Lately, I've been even worse. My B string (second from the bottom) just won't cooperate. It's as if the only tone I need has been erased from its memory.

So I called my mom for an over-the-phone consult. Is the knot unraveled at the tuning peg? No. Is it frayed at the bridge? Huh. Yes, a bit. Just beside the tuning peg, the outer coating of the string looks loose, like it is unwinding.

Next stop: YouTube, which gave me the 411 on guitar stringing. Apparently I need one of these to pop the bridge pin. I suppose I could find something else in the house—a bottle opener, a staple remover, a nail file—to do it, but chances are I'd just make a nice big hole in my bridge.

So, I guess I need this thingamajig. Instead of ordering it online, I might brave the local guitar store for a demo. This project will likely have to wait until the weekend, which means a couple of days without the strains—and I mean strains—of "Walk or Ride" and "I Heard a Voice in Dresden." Perhaps the birds will start singing again?

Guitar Dyslexia

During a brief period when I was eleven, if someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would matter-of-factly reply: "I have a calling to work with the dyslexic."

Amazingly, no one laughed, punched me in the face, or even asked me why I thought I was God's gift to special education. At that age, I knew this many people with dyslexia: zero. So, where I got this idea is unclear. I suspect I only learned the word "dyslexia" from an elementary school jokester who pointed out that someone with dyslexia would likely pray to a canine deity. Nice.

I think I just liked the way the word "dyslexia" sounded. It was exotic and musical to my sixth-grade ears, and I thought it would look pretty on a business card. Needless to say, my flirtation with this vocation was short lived—which should be a relief to educators and students everywhere.

While no one punished me for my misguided hubris at the time, cosmic retribution is here in the form of guitar tablature. Guitar tabs are essentially "Battleship"-style grids that show guitar players where to put their fingers on the strings—for example, second string, third fret. This way, you don't actually have to know how to read music in order to play. (You can see the tab for "Happy Birthday" here.)

I can read music about as well as a second grader can read a story aloud. I haltingly sound out phrases and practice them over and over until I get up to speed, then move on to puzzle over the next section. But my music-reading skills are all based on the piano—I don't really know where to find the notes on the guitar strings yet. So, tabs are for me! Except: I can't read them.

Tabs feature six horizontal lines, each representing a string on the guitar. So far, so good. But here's where it gets tricky: The top line of the tab actually corresponds to the bottom string of the guitar ("high" E). I think this is because when you are holding your guitar and looking down at the fret board, you are practically standing on your head—so maybe this tab format was designed to make life easier for your brain.

I see the logic in this, but my instincts are the reverse. I always think that the top line on the tab should be the top string of the guitar ("low" E). So, imagine what my brain does when it sees this insane tab for "Stairway to Heaven." Try as I might, I can't wrap my head around it. Show me a tab half as complicated as this, and I will probably spend 20 minutes counting on my fingers to find the right string for the first note, second-guessing myself, reversing the count, and then throwing in the towel and searching for the song's chords online instead.

Short of seeking out an eleven-year-old with a calling to help me overcome my guitar dyslexia, my only choice is to buckle down and practice—and it's going to be hideous. Maybe I'd better start with "Happy Birthday" before I tackle "Stairway," eh?

The Guitar Pick

On Christmas morning, my husband handed me a small wrapped box about the size of a glasses case. I gingerly removed the paper, lifted the lid, and gasped. Inside was the most beautiful Christmas tree ornament I'd ever seen—a perfect replica of an acoustic guitar, down to the tuning pegs. You can't exactly play a song on it or anything, but if you strum the strings you can hear a high-pitched something. I was delighted.

"You know that's not actually your present," said my husband as I hung the ornament on the tree. "It's a symbol—I just thought you'd want to pick out your own guitar."

I was over the moon. I have always wanted an acoustic guitar—sometimes secretly, sometimes not so secretly. I couldn't wait to go guitar shopping.

Buying a guitar is not—as I thought—like going to the pound to pick up a puppy. You don't just enter a music warehouse, walk the aisles, and wait for a cosmic connection between you and your destined dreadnought (that's guitar-speak for a guitar body that looks like this). There are all sorts of variables to consider—makes, model numbers, materials, tones, aesthetics, not to mention price. It may not be as complicated (or expensive) as buying a car, but being uninformed can be costly.

Anticipating this, my husband read up on the best guitar options for beginners, so he had a handy list at the ready when we walked into the Guitar Center. This talisman served to keep option overload from swallowing me up when we walked into the guitar room, which was literally covered from floor to ceiling with instruments of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. I had no idea what to do. Do you pull the guitars off of the wall? Do you strum them in medias res? Apparently, neither. You point, and the sales guy magically plucks them out of the air for you.

The sales guy, Aaron, was patient and knowledgeable and covered in tattoos and piercings, like all serious guitar players should be. He'd obviously seen his share of newbies, but I was still mortified when he placed an actual guitar in my hands. I felt ridiculous, especially when the teenage customer behind me was holding court with his family, telling them what to look for in a guitar, all the while noodling "Stairway to Heaven." I felt like a total idiot holding an instrument I didn't know how to play.

I tried to remember one of the chords my mother taught me 15 years ago and managed to form a sloppy A major after several interminable seconds. I strummed it timidly once, winced, and prayed that I would turn invisible. Aaron finally left me with the guitar and my mortification to find a different model.

"That one," whispered my husband, pointing to the wooden instrument on my lap, "is on the list." I nodded, grateful to have some point of reference in this sea of strings.

Aaron returned with another guitar, slightly less beautiful than the first—more of a butter yellow than the mellow "Sandburst" finish of the one in my lap. He traded guitars with me, and I fumbled like someone trying to hold a baby for the first time. Finally, Aaron took pity on me and expertly played a few bars himself on first one guitar, then the other. "Hear the difference?" he asked.

I'm ashamed to say I did not. But we took the pretty "Sandburst" one, which he said had a "brighter" tone. Score! It also happened to be on my husband's list: a Yamaha FG700S. Double-score!

Of course, my puppy love was in full effect. It was this one, or no guitar at all. So, I let some things slide that I normally wouldn't have. For example, this guitar was a display model, which meant it did not come with a box—even this novice knows that is a no-no (thanks to the pontificating teenager in the store, of course). Aaron insisted that mine were the only fingerprints on the guitar—but this was demonstrably untrue, as he'd just played it for me. (Of course, it looked pristine to me—luckily, I haven't had any issues with it.)

Also, the store was out of cases, which meant I opted for the sucker's extended warranty just in case the guitar got crushed by a herd of elephants on the way home. Let's just say you're probably not getting a bargain when the sales guy throws in a set of free picks—those seemed like pity picks to me.

Still, I had that new puppy feeling. I gingerly carried my prize to the car and arranged a make-shift beach-towel bed for it in the hatchback. By the time we got home, I could hardly wait to play my A chord over and over and over and over again. Next time, we'll know to pick up some ear plugs, too.

Songs I Am Butchering This Week

• "Walk or Ride" by The Ditty Bops


• "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" (Bruns & Blackburn/They Might Be Giants)


• "After Hours" by The Velvet Underground


• "I Heard Your Voice in Dresden" by Elvis Perkins


• A selection from the Juno soundtrack

Guitar Heroes

It was a warm September evening, and my husband and I were finishing up our first set of early Beatles tunes. We'd missed some notes here and there, but overall, the drums and the guitar sounded great. Even the vocals felt good.

As soon as the final note rang out, we received our first standing ovation. Barely balanced on his feet, our 15-month-old son clapped furiously while his eyes showered us with absolute adoration. "My parents," those eyes said, "are the coolest people on the planet. They can play music!"

My Catholic guilt roiled as the digitally-rendered faces of the Fab Four froze on the television screen.

"It's not real," I said, removing the plastic replica of Paul McCartney's Hofner bass guitar from around my neck and clacking the color-coded buttons with my fingers. "See?"

Of course, he didn't. The fact that his parents were playing "Beatles RockBand" for the Nintendo Wii held no meaning for him. As far as he was concerned, we were the Beatles.

That night, we played song after song—our son clapping jubilantly after each. I recognized the look of wonder on his face. It is the same one I give my own mother when she plays her real guitar—you know, the kind made out of wood with six nylon strings? From the moment my mother strummed the first few bars of "Edelweiss" for me when I was six years old, I knew I wanted to play the guitar, too. But as childhood plans often go, mine was sidelined when I was distracted by other things, like the piano (I loved it but never practiced).

In my last semester of college, I finally took a guitar class for beginners using my mom's first and only guitar. It was fun, but the week after the class ended, the bridge of the 30-year-old instrument spontaneously busted—which seemed like an omen to me. After all, in my mother's hands, the guitar is an articulate conversationalist—in mine, a grunting caveman with a frog in its throat.

However, as I clacked my way through "Twist and Shout" last September, I vowed to get a real instrument into the house so that our son would no longer be dazzled by pretty fakes. In the meantime, we set him up on the RockBand drums. With a drum stick in each hand, he sat on his daddy's lap as they tapped out the rhythm to "Yellow Submarine" on the corresponding colored dots. For now, at least, he can "play music," too.