New Order - Blue Monday guitar tab
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Subject: n/new_order/blue_monday.tab
Got a drum machine for your birthday and don't know what to do with it? Read
on...
BLUE MONDAY (12" mix)
by New Order
Tabbed by Richard Magrath (my first!), LtRicardo@aol.com.
Not obviously an easy song to play on the guitar, with lots of electronic
instruments, drum machines, synths, etc. - I don't even know whether there
was any guitar on that song at all - but in reality (though it's not like
I've ever played it live!) because the song is based on the drum machine
rhythm the guitarist really doesn't have a lot to play (unless you really
want to do all the synth parts yourself) yet because of the simple,
repetitive structure of the song (it *was* a dance record after all) the few
melody lines the guitarist plays are central to the whole song and thus
highly memorable. These are, in rough order of how often they occur):
E-----------------------------------
B------------------6-6-6-8----------
G--7-7---7-7-7-7-----------5-5-5-7--
D-----------------------------------
A-----------------------------------
E-----------------------------------
(that's the well-known main melody that comes in right at the beginning)
G--------------------------------------------------------
D-------------------------------3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3--5--0--
A--5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5--3--5-----------------------------
E--------------------------------------------------------
(the really cool bass line)
G----------------
D----------------
A--5--3--------5-
E--------1--3----
(the slightly Tainted Love-ish bass line that runs beneath the bleating noise)
E-----------------------------------
B-----6-------8-------b8(10)--------
G--7-----5-7-----5-7---------5-7-7--
D-----------------------------------
A-----------------------------------
E-----------------------------------
(this is all I can remember of the guitar solo... play with lots of vibrato)
How to recreate the New Order sound? (Especially as I think those "guitar
parts" might actually be synths) A wah-wah pedal comes to mind for the first
bit, with a little tremolo (but not tons of it), but I haven't tried it. The
bass has a kind of trebley sound, and I think the guitar would sound best
with a clean, bridge tone. You can play the bass lines on the guitar too, of
course. As for the order of the song I'll leave that up to you - I can't
really be bothered to go through the whole thing noting out "fast drums -
melody one - verse two - bass two - harmonised vocals" and so (it's 7 and a
half minutes long!), the joy of this song is that it's very loose and you can
pretty much stick it all the bits together by ear (though by listening to the
record it's easy enough to find out approximately where they all go) as I'm
sure New Order used to do. Just let the drum machine keep the rhythm going
(and the song together) and have fun trying to recreate the various weird
effects within. (hint: try plugging guitar pedals - echo, chorus, etc. - into
the microphone cable...)
(all my own work)
