Chords for Learn to play Streets Of London Ralph McTell acoustic guitar lesson Preview

[C] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _
[Am] _ _ _ [Em] _ _ _ [F] _ _
[C] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ [C] _ _
_ _ _ Have you [G] seen the old man in the [Am] [Em] closed-down market,
_ [F] _ kicking out [C] the papers with [Dm] his worn [G]-out shoes?
[C] In his [G] eyes you see no pride, [Am] and held loosely [Em] at his [F] side,
_ [C] yesterday's papers [G] telling _ [C] yesterday's news.
_ _ _ [F] So how can [Em] you tell me [C] you're [Em] [Am] lonely,
[Em] and [D] you say for you the [G] sun don't shine?
_ _ _ [C] Let me take [G] you by the hand,
[A] lead you [Em] through the streets of London,
[F]
I'll [C] show you something [G] to make you change [C] your mind.
_ [G] _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _
_ [N] Well, this has been a really heavily requested song,
and I am _ thrilled to finally get to it.
This song was very special to me when I first heard it in the early 70s,
and I was actually playing and singing a lot of songs back then,
so that sort of petered out as I got more into instrumental guitar playing and stuff like that.
But this is a song, we're of course talking about Streets of London by Ralph McTell.
Now, Ralph was a, he was born in 1944 in England,
and grew up kind of playing guitar, inspired by some of his neighbors and things like that,
and made some trips to, his birth name by the way was Ralph May,
I'll get to why we call him Ralph McTell now. _
_ _ _ _ _ One thing that's always important to know about a song is what key it's in,
what chords are in the key, and what chords are not in the key that they use in there.
So one thing that's a very cool thing about Streets of London here is it uses chords all in the key of C.
As a matter of fact, it uses all of the chords in the key of C.
So hopefully you know that the primary chords in a key, there are six of them,
three major chords [C] and three minor chords, three majors and three minors. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The chords we're going to use in Streets of London are just all your normal chords in [G] the key of C.
The one thing we're going to be doing on a C chord is sometimes alternating back and forth
from the fifth string to the sixth with your third finger.
Now a lot of people will play this chord using both fingers like this.
I really prefer not to do that because most of the time when you're doing that,
you, or well, not most, but a lot of times, when you're doing this,
you want to be able to use your fourth finger for a little bit of melody [Am] going on here too.
[Em] _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [G] So independent control of these is really important. _ _ _ _ _
[C] _ _ _ _ The right hand for a fingerpicking song like Streets of London is in just basic standard position.
All the way through the song, your thumb, well, unless we get to the D minor in regular fingering,
but your thumb is going to be covering the three bass strings, the sixth, fifth and fourth,
and your index finger, middle finger and ring finger are covering the three top strings.
Now a standard Travis picking [G#] pattern might be something like [C] this.
I'm playing a C chord. _ _ _ _
_ Hopefully you're familiar with that from some of the other songs that we have here. _ _
_ _ [N] So let's break this down a little bit.
First thing you have to understand in any song you're going to be doing fingerpicking with
is a very solid, clear _ understanding of the chord progression.
So take a look at the chart, the page with just the chords on it.
We'll get to the tablature a little bit later.
But just the chart, and what you want to be able to do is just kind of strum through the whole song,
playing the chords the way you're going to finger them in the song.
Now, the [C] C's again are going to be normal, so let's just play four beats of C,
_ _ [Em] [G] to G, to A minor, _ [Am] _ to E minor, [Em] _ _ _
[F] to F.
Now, fingering [C] these, well, C, [G] D [Dm] minor, and G.
_ [G] _
[N] So get used to just running through the chords so you know the sequence.
That's step one.
_ _ _ _ Well, I'm not going to spend quite as much time now breaking down all the rest of the song
as we just did in the introduction, because if you understand everything that's going on in the intro,
the verse and the [Fm] chorus are really just a little bit more of the same.
So let's [F#] take a look, though, at the [N] tab, and I'll kind of address some very specific things. _ _ _ _ _ _
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