“Pretender (Acoustic)” - AJR

Hello! I’ve been posting quite a few “oldies” and thus for this week I’m sharing “Pretender” by AJR, an indie pop group that my tween / teen students are really into.

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• The first three chords are probably the first three chords you learned how to play!

• The D/F# can be a little bit tricky. I personally finger that chord with 1, 2, 4, 3. But many others finger a standard D chord and then use their thumb to grab the low F# on the E string.

• They play the B7 as a barre—ahh! You could always replace this with the open-string B7, but AJR voices it this way to give us that D# in the upper voice (leading into E at the repeat). Barres are a massive topic, but I’ll give you a few pointers:

  • With your left hand, think about pulling the guitar back into your chest using your back and shoulder muscles. Your right arm will apply counter pressure to the body of the guitar to prevent it from splaying out in front of you. Recruiting these larger muscles is so much more effective (and less painful!) than slamming our thumb into the back of the fretboard to generate the force needed to barre.

  • Make sure your finger is right behind the fret bar (which will always be the place that requires the least amount of effort).

  • Rock your finger to the left and see if you can depress the string with the hard bone on the side of your finger instead of the soft flesh of the underside of our finger.

  • Experiment with what portion of your finger you’re using. Some people have their first finger extending past the 6th string and off the fretboard, I personally barre just the 5 strings needed (and mute the 6th string with the tip of my index finger). We’ve all got different hands we’re working with and we’ve just got to figure out what works best for ourselves!

Note that AJR plucks this piece, but this version is written with a pick in mind.

Have a good weekend!
-Austin