How to play What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes
What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes is an ideal track for developing steel-string acoustic, and electric guitarists. From their enormously successful 1992 album Bigger, Better, Faster, More! What’s Up is the global hit that made 4NB one of the biggest one-hit-wonders of the Grunge rock era. It has since become a staple of Rock playlists in the streaming era.
Chords : A A2 Bm D D2 and the open-strings chord used between the A to Bm, and Bm to D. The A2 is used in place of the open chord only in the slow, bluesy ending but sounds good if you want to include it in the verses.
Do I have to play the Bm bar-chord? Yes ; there is no easy version of B Minor that will sound good. The Bm chord played throughout the recording is the bar-chord version at the 2nd fret.
What is an Open-strings chord? Just play the open strings whilst moving towards the next chord. This is a common chord-change trick that is easy to miss but in What’s Up it is distinctive because it is for two strums. It almost sounds like it may be another chord but it’s just the open strings.
Pick or Fingers? What you hear on both guitars in What’s Up is the sound of a plectrum striking steel strings. If you aim to emulate the sound of the original recording you need to use a pick.
Acoustic or Electric? Acoustic steel-string for the rhythm guitar and electric guitar for the lead parts is what you hear on the 4 Non Blondes original but the chords sound fine on electric too.
TAB timing : the graphic representation of long note values is misleading in TAB. One-beat and two-beat notes are displayed with just a plain stem and appear to be the same. A stem with an added dot is either 1.5 beats or 3 beats ; the clue to longer values is there is more space before the next number. This is not ideal and highlights some of the concerns about TAB. Use the recording to guide your understanding of the timing.
Relevant pages in Modern Guitar Chord Styles 1 : For an excellent course to general chord and rhythm techniques, as needed for What’s Up see pages 10, 14 - 15, 34, 24, 19 - 20 and 31. To learn more about the electric guitar scales and techniques used in this song pick up a copy of the very helpful Electric Guitar Solo Style 1
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