Hey, how’s it going this is Shawn Daniel with Guitar Control,I’m here to show you how to play “Harmony Hall” a very cool song by Vampire Weekend. Super easy to play, sounds impressive which are definitely the songs you want to have in your repertoire.
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Click on the Tabs button to follow the chords and tabs.
Really easy three chords, three and a half chords essentially capo on the fourth fret. So we have a riff, a chord progression and a slight variation of a chord progression basically to start with the riff. Just quick hammer-on and pull-offs which is absolutely great. Remember that capo is on the 4th fret and we’re going to start with the G chord, the great thing about a G major chord is you can do this like a really cool G major pentatonic, a minor pentatonic run in this position.
Let’s go through the notes of the G major pentatonic scale, we start on a G and get that open E-string. If you want we can just go through up to the G-string we have 3, then A-string open 2, D-string open 2, G-string open 2. Super simple, now what we’re going to do is we’re replacing a G chord with this riff or you feel like G, but you didn’t come here to learn how to strum a G chord. You came here to play “Harmony Hall” alright, so we’re going to strike the third fret on the low E-string 3rd fret relative to the capo and we’re going to start this hammer-on, hammering on the two strings.
Hammer-on is striking the A-string once, and then come down with your pointer finger. Then we’re going to go down the line and play another G to kind of end that ascending run upwards. Now we go back down, we’re going to descend through the same scale but doing a hammer-on and pull-off. Make sure you get that proper pull off technique. Just an open G-stringer hammer-on using my middle finger for this one, you can use your middle finger, your pointer finger over as well.
Now when you leave the string just pull-off as you leave, and if you go straight up you’re not going to get as loud of the strike you want to hear. Open G, open D, open A, now I do it with the pick and the cool thing about this is to minimize the string noise. I’m using my fingers to hold the string below, see how that B-string is moving otherwise you run the risk of doing that it’s a little bit sloppier.
That’s the nice thing about getting a really fine tune with your strings you can run through these cleaner strength thing so basically it’s just more about the concept of descending through all these hammer-on and pull-off all the way back. Altogether we’ve got G, hammer, hammer, hammer, G, so we’re just going from G to G, a low G, in front of the E-string to open G, this is like an octaves worth of notes in that scale.
The next we’re going to do is add a C chord, the cool thing about this is you actually harmonize it with the C chord but if you’re just doing it solo acoustic guitar without a looper you can get away with something that sounds like it by doing the same thing over a C major chord. Now it’s going to sound like this, the same concept but through the notes of the C major chord three name to D, open G, 1B, so we start now down the string with 3A, hammer-on D, hammer-on G, B, 1st fret and then open.
Everything about this is we’re actually going backwards from a B note and a C, we start with the B and that’s the B. Which actually plays a little bit of a role layer in the song, we’re going to get to the chords right now. Basically that part on the chord chart you’re going to see is the verse, I suppose would just be G to C and G again. That would be a chord version to play instead of doing all the hammers you feel like you can always find a cord replacement for a riff, and this is just B, G, to a C.
The rest of the song is going to be a very simple chord progression. It’s going to sound like this or some variation. Again this is more like of a piano type thing but we’re also doing a D major chord to a G major chord to a C chord and you can hold that C two bars or we can change it from the C to a C major 7 as you see on the chord chart.
So we have a full bar of D, full bar G, a full bar of C, and a lot of times you hear kind of like a variation of a C and then C with a B, which is just taking your pointer finger out, it’s the C major seven chords. Remember when we do this there’s that B note and again B relative to the capo this note specifically actually d# in the real world terms but anyways that’s how you share that final bar of C with this C.
When it gets to the chorus just keep that C all the way through or you can always go a little more muted again there’s an infinite amount of variations you can make with strumming and it’s really just up to you whatever you feel comfortable doing that you can do in time that’s why it’s great to practice a metronome specifically with this song where we have that riff because being able to do that cleanly in a metronome is something that is going to improve your playing and will sound impressive. Again we’re trying to sound very impressive here this is an excellent example of how you can do that in a very simple way, was just really three chords essentially again the variation being C to C major7 and then like a Killer Vampire Weekend Riff.
Hopefully you enjoyed that, definitely check out the other songs you never heard, they we’re really cool and have really cool tracks from what I consider a really great modern band and if you have any questions or comments hit us up in the comment section below and make sure to subscribe on our You Tube Channel and we’ll see you in our next video lessons, thanks for watching.
