Available Space - Ry Cooder - Tutorial + Tab

 


This is my version of the blues tune Available Space by Ry Cooder. It is an instrumental piece and I have just tabbed out and played the main section which forms the first two playthroughs of the music. Later in the song the music goes on more rambling solo's but there are multiple instruments playing the lead melody line together. Therefore, I have just tabbed out the main section which can be repeated with variations as you see fit. This is a fingerstyle piece and requires the use of a slide throughout.

It is played on a guitar in Open G tuning, is in 4/4 time.

Below are some tips to help you play this piece, and links to download the tab.

Available Space Downloadable Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT
 
  • Timing the Gap - Within this piece there is gap where no music is played. Although this might seem ok, timing the length of this gap is quite tricky, especially as it is preceded by a slow slide. It occurs in bars 13-14. Its starts with a slow slide on the 2nd beat of this bar with the slide culminating on the 3rd beat of this bar. There is then a gap of 2 beats before the music restarts. The difficulty comes with timing the slide to land on the correct beat of the bar and then counting the 2 beat gap. The best aproach is not to worry too much about timing the slide correctly and just keep time and make sure the music restarts on the 2nd beat of bar 14. Use a metronome if that helps. If you are playing this as a solo guitar piece, getting the timing of this gap accurate is less important as you dont have to keep time with other instruments.


  • Using a High Action - This piece requires you to use a slide throughout. There are many parts in it where you have to pick two strings together, sometimes quite a distance apart, such as the 1st and 5th strings. Because of this, you have to bar all the strings with the slide. If you are using a straight slide, without and curve on it, it can be hard to make sure the slide makes contact with all the strings, and not have them hitting the fretboard. As such, I would recommend playing this on a guitar with quite a high action.
 
This is about all I need to say about this piece. It is quite a straightforward fingerstyle blues piece. If you are comfortable using a slide when playing fingerstyle guitar, then this shouldn't be too tricky to learn.

Thanks for Reading,
Neil

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