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Will Hay!WILLHAYGUITAR.COM

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!FREEBIES - BEST FRIEND

Foster the People song tutorial

!Level: Beginner-Intermediate

Jul 2014

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Will Hay Guitar Tuition !

WILLHAYGUITAR.COM - [email protected]

�1FREEBIES -BEST FRIEND

http://willhayguitar.com



Best Friend !Best friend is track number 7 on the new Foster the People album ‘Supermodel’. It

was released as the third single on March 10th and is a nice little song with

contrasting funky upbeat choruses and darker more stripped back verses. I had

the idea to provide a tutorial on it based on how you might want to approach it in a

covers band. Firstly I will deal with the individual sections and at the end write

down the arrangement, showing you how to piece it all together.

I played the song on my Stratocaster with a nice gritty clean/crunch tone. I also

employ a delay pedal, though don't get too hung up on brand here, so long as it will

give you nice clear delays you will be fine.

!CHORUS !The chorus is the most prominent guitar driven section in the song, and due to its

funk guitar style, possibly the hardest section too. There are four chords arranged

over two bars. Lets look at the chord shapes:

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!!!A basic strumming pattern of the chords would look like this:

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8

Fm

1243

Gb

6

13 1 2

Bb5

31 4

8

Ab

8

13 21

Fm Gb

Ab Bb5



As I say in the video the next step is to flesh out the strumming pattern with muted

notes. Below is the pattern written out in tab, mutes included.

Throughout the course of the video I play a number of variations, mostly off the

cuff, but as an example here is a variation you could try:

!!!As you can see I've varied both

the rhythms and the amounts of

chord strums so don’t be afraid

once you have the basic pattern

nailed to play around with it.

!!!

VERSE !On the recording and also live there is very little for us to do. If I was performing

this live my instinct would be to try and add some atmosphere to the verse as well

as help recreate the heavily produced effects you hear all over the album track. Its

impotent not to overdo it though as you don’t want to distract too much from the

vocalist, after all thats all most people will pay attention to.

!What I’ve chosen to do on my performance is put my delay pedal on and play some

floaty, haunting lead parts as well as some chord fragments and other noises. Lets

look at where the ideas came from…….

!�3FREEBIES -BEST FRIEND



OPERATION FILL OUT THE SOUND !The chord movement implied by the bass is four bars on a Bb minor chord followed

by two bars of Ab major. We then come across two different endings as shown

below:

Ignoring the endings (underlined in red) for a moment, we can summarise that

there are simply those two main sounds, Bb minor and Ab major. We will focus

entirely on those sounds as the second, longer ending, leads into the chorus, and

we will deal with it separately, whilst the first one flies by quickly but can be played

with the same approach as the Bb minor chord. That leaves us two sounds to deal

with, minor up first:

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Try playing the notes one at a time or pairing some together to make small chord

fragments, be sparse and play softer dynamically.


Bb minor pentatonic Bb natural minor

1

1

1 4

4

4

3

3

1

1

3

1

6 6

1

1

1

1

1

1

3

3

3

3

2

2

4

4

4

4

4



We are on the major sound for considerably less time so I’ll try a different

approach over this chord. Whilst improvising with scales is great, if you aren’t used

to it you may find you need a bit of thinking time to help visualise the patterns and

try out your ideas. This is fine over the Bb as you have four whole bars but the Ab

only shows up for half that time so here’s something you can try if you don't have a

lot of time on a chord and are panicking about visualising whole scale choices.

!CHORD EMBELLISHMENT It will require far less thought to solo using smaller fragments of a larger chord you

may already be holding down, or simply visualising in your head as you look at the

guitar neck. If you find those ideas a bit dull after a while you can also embellish the

chord with one or two extra non-chord notes that are in close proximity. They will

give you a similar result to improvising with a scale but require a lot less brain

power. Below in black is the Ab major chord we will be playing over and in red I

have also added a few nice notes you can embellish the chord with. Get

experimenting!

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!!!!VERSE ENDING 2 I mentioned we would come back to this and I am a man of my word. There is no

guitar playing these chords but you do hear a nice little funk line on the ending of

the second verse. If you are desperate to follow the chords go over the page and

look at the pre chorus ending, they are the same chords. Here is the funk line:

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PRE-CHORUS Whilst the recorded pre-chorus is mostly produced sounds, the live pre-chorus is

very simple, and follows the two main chords from our verse, Bbm and Ab. We will

be strumming a fragment the chord aggressively once and letting delay repeats

continue the rhythm. Below you see what you will be playing. Note that

rhythmically it is on the offbeat of beat 1 (also called the ‘and' of 1).

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And now we see what you actually hear with the delay repeats doing their job:

!!!!!!!The ending of the pre-chorus is a different matter as there is no guitar played here,

but its a shame to let good harmony go to waste so we will play something

regardless. If you are playing this song live in a covers band, depending on what

lineup you have, you may not have the luxury of a keyboard player to make all the

interesting sounds, so like we did in the verse it can be your job to step into these

gaps and help flesh a song out. Below left is a simplified version of the chord

movement and below right is the full chords. Feel free to gradually introduce a

strumming pattern to help build up the section.

!!!!PRE-CHORUS




MIDDLE Last up is the middle section, again not a section with any original input from the

guitar, we are going to get involved regardless. Here are the chords:

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!Notice that we leave the last chord ringing out for two

bars. If you’ve watched the video you will know I also

pick out some of the high notes at random to help fill

the sound out. Right at the end of the Middle section

theres a stop in the music and we play the following

chord and slide down:

!!ARRANGEMENT Here is the arrangement, lets put it all together:

!Chorus x 4

Verse x 1 (once through whole thing

with both ending)

Pre-chorus x1

Chorus x 6

Verse x1 (once through whole thing

with both ending)

Pre-chorus x1

Chorus x 8

Middle x 4

Chorus x10

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Me and my best friends



NEED SOME HELP? !Not sure about some of the chords, scales or techniques in this lesson?

Please check out my website where there are products and courses to help. I will

be adding more as time allows but if you have any specific requests of topics you

would like me to cover, or any other feedback then get in touch via the contact

page of my website willhayguitar.com or email me at [email protected].

!!!!!!!

Will Hay Guitar Tuition !

WILLHAYGUITAR.COM - [email protected] !!!!!!

I really hope you have enjoyed this freebie, It has taken many hours of hard work and

effort to create. It is intended as strictly non-profit, educational use only as set forth in

section 107 of U.S copyright law (Fair usage). All copyrighted music is offered as short

excerpts only for the above educational presentation.

I can’t accept money for these freebies, however if you feel you’ve learnt from my site and

want to send a thank you in the form of a Paypal donation you can by clicking below. It

all helps me to keep this site running and lets me know my efforts are appreciated!

!

�


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