Guitar Lesson 2: 90s Power Pop

This is part of an ongoing series of posts documenting my current guitar student’s private lessons. Obviously, the strength of private study is that each lesson is customized to your needs and goals. But there’s likely something useful here for beginner guitarists who don’t have access to a teacher. As usual, the tab/notation and audio examples were created with Guitar Pro, which I’ve used for years and recommend. If you follow that link and buy a copy, it helps support the site.

My student has an interest in 90s power pop (a.k.a., pop punk) and was playing a bit of the main riff to Weezer’s 1994 hit “Undone — The Sweater Song” during our first lesson. It’s from their eponymous 1994 album, Weezer, which is also known as The Blue Album. They put out a 30th anniversary deluxe version recently, which they’re promoting on their website.

I did a little research on “Undone,” and it’s got great educational value for beginning guitarists. It’s got a fun, easy, instantly recognizable main riff, some power chord work, and a few essential cowboy chords. It’s all very useful stuff.

Memory Lane

Before we get going, you might as well refresh your memory of the tune. You can find it on Spotify, and Apple Music. Here’s the official music video from YouTube. It was shot by Spike Jonze, no less:

I always like to compare how bands play songs live, vs how they play them on albums, so here’s a live version of the song from the same time period on the Conan O’Brian show:

The Transcription

I transcribed the main riff, the chorus, and an alternate “cowboy chord” version of the chorus that the 2nd guitarist plays during the verses of the live version (and that is probably lurking quietly in parts of the album version). Here’s a PDF I put together in Guitar Pro, for educational purposes only, of course:

Things to Notice

There are some cool things going on in this song.

  • The main riff implies G, C7, and D chords but creates some spooky atmosphere by letting some dissonant notes ring throughout. The part that outlines the C7 and D chords is a cool example of how good things can happen when you shift a chord shape up the neck a few frets while leaving the open notes the same. Hundreds of songs do this. It’s a great trick.
  • The chorus is power chord driven. The first chord, G5, is the usual, three-note, root-five-octave variety. But the C5 and D5 add a little complexity by adding a 5th below the root (on the low E string), making it 5-R-5-R. This makes things heavier, especially when you’ve got a lot of distortion on it, as is the case here.
  • The cowboy chords are three of the most common and most useful. They’re also among the first three chords beginning guitarists learn.

Credits

Props to Weezer, of course, for creating an iconic song which also happens to be a perfect teaching example for beginning rock guitarists. The featured image of this post, is a cropped version of this image by Thomas Kelley via Unsplash and is used in accordance with the Unsplash License. The music examples were created by me using Guitar Pro.