Such a pretty song, such a sad song. This song is so charming and such a great song for beginner/intermediate guitarists. If you go about watching different performances of this song from live shows you will find that Jewel has so many colors in her voice. Every performance of this song seems to have a different palette of sounds, and that’s one of my favorite things about a good singer songwriter. Listen for that if you get around to it; learning from Jewel’s singing style would be a great education in its own right.
Guitar technique in this song is picking up right where we left off with the ‘Mario Kart Love Song.’ This is another ¼ note groove that takes out the thumb stroke on beat 3, but this song has slightly more intricate finger picking and a swing to the rhythm. I’ve taken some time to explain how to do the swing in the video lesson, but on this lesson page there are a few extra things I’d like to point out about this song.
Jewel plays this song a couple of different ways; it’s easy to think of this song in layers. The most essential layer that you hear on the single release is just a finger picking outline. Since there’s a band you don’t need the guitar to be too active. In some live shows Jewel will just play the finger picking, but in other shows she will add a the pluck and chuck strokes. When I first learned this song I played it with a full quarter note pattern in the thumb (that is, I didn’t take out the third beat). All of these approaches work very well, and you can blend them to give a greater dynamic range to the guitar. This first lesson will explain the pluck and chuck pattern that she uses, and the advanced lesson later on will get into layering the other approaches into a single performance.