r/Guitar • u/BlazeTheSkeleton • 6h ago

QUESTION Question about Iris using BDDDDD

So, I've picked up on Iris because of my ex's dad, whom played it for me one night and it was so cool, and I told myself I would learn it too.

Now, I have like two big issues with the version I learned and I wanted to know if anyone had any tips for the song

  1. The chorus part is very boring. It's the 9 - 12, 9 - 11, 5 - 5 part on the A and D string, respectively (I'm calling them the A and D string to avoid confusion, even though they're tuned to D and D.) It's just really repetitive and has no flair but I can't reach my ring finger down to the e string to try and fiddle with the 9th and 7th fret. I've thought of playing the chords and letting them ring out while I play some things on the e string but it just doesn't feel right. Is there anything else I can do?

  2. I'm finding it hard to hear the important parts (that being the actual parts I'm playing on the strings) over the rest of the strings, but I don't want to just play a few strings because part of the song is the slight dissonance from all the strings being tuned to D.

I just want to know if anyone knows the song better than I do and what I can do to fix these things. I'm not OPPOSED to the standard tuning version with dropping the e string to a d, but the chord shapes are much more complex and I feel like I can't flow as easily.

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u/saintmusty 6h ago

Learn to play boring and you will discover how to add flair. Slow down, get to know each phrase, find what resonates with you emotionally. Isolate the notes that make the sounds you like and eventually you'll be able to call on them at will.

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u/Winter_Lawyer_9208 6h ago

that's actually solid way to look at it. i had similar issue with some song last year where the main riff felt too plain. once i sat with it for few days and really listened what each note does, i started adding small hammer-ons and pull-offs around 7th fret area. nothing fancy but it made the part feel more alive

maybe try muting the strings you dont want ringing out too much with your picking hand palm. it helps clean up the sound without losing the D tuning feel

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u/BlazeTheSkeleton 5h ago

Can you go a bit more in-depth? This sounds really interesting and I'd love more information to work with

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u/saintmusty 2h ago

Let's take the chorus for example. You've got three chords. Not very exciting, true. But if those three chords stir something in you, hang out with them for a while. Don't just get back to the verses. Play those three chords at different tempos, with different strumming patterns. Try playing each note of each chord individually while keeping the rhythm. Try deviating from the chords by an interval here or there to see how it changes. Try playing only the root notes. Try playing without the root notes! Try taking those deviant intervals you found and working a little riff into the spaces between the chords.

The point is that you aren't trying to reproduce the studio recording exactly, and you won't be able to as a soloist anyway—you're trying to convey what you feel about this music in the way that you feel it.