Fire And Rain Guitar Lesson

If you're ever in the mood to just sit back, relax, and play along with a bit of tranquil music, James Taylor is surely a go-to. In this lesson, we're going to be looking at all the details you need to be able to play 'Fire and Rain'. And don't be mistaken, just because this track is relaxing, it doesn't make it easy to play.

Thomas has provided another fantastic video lesson to help outline everything you need to know for 'Fire and Rain'. I always like to give a disclaimer before jumping into the lesson, and it's that there will not be any tabs provided in the write-up. So, please referring to the video to piece all of the information in the write-up together!

Intro

Like most songs, we're going to start with the intro. But before we look at what chords are used, we need to make sure that we have our capo on the 3rd fret. And just to make sure we're on the same page going forward, we're going to treat the capo as the '0' fret. What this means is that if either myself or Thomas mention 'fret 2' - it's technically the 5th fret on the board.

With that said, let's take a look at all the chord shapes we need to play the intro!

It might look like there are loads of chords needed from the chord charts above. But, the Dsus and Asus chords are just embellishments over D and A major respectively. The challenge with these embellishments is making sure we're playing the right string at the right time, as well as using hammer-ons and pull-offs to properly replicate the dynamics.

If you're not sure what a sus chord is, 'sus' stands for suspended, and is telling us to suspend, or change the 3rd degree of a triad to either the 2nd (sus2), or 4th degree (sus4), depending on the chord name.

Another chord name that might look strange is G/E. '/' chords are simply telling us that we need to play the chord on the left side of the '/', and play the note on the right side as a bass note under the chord.

I'd recommend practicing the transitions between each chord before adding all the embellishments. That way, you'll be able to get the general feel and timing before adding the details.

Verse

The verse is a lovely continuation from the intro, as it uses the same chords and progression. The main difference between the two sections is that the verse is slightly less intricate with all the embellishments, and therefore, slightly less complicated to play. Another smaller difference is that the rhythm slows down slightly from lots of 16th notes to mostly 8th notes.

Another challenge for both the verse and the intro is to try and make the chords ring out as long as you can. This will really help achieve the smooth and tranquil atmosphere of the track.

You might have also noticed that Thomas isn't playing the full chord shapes - only the notes that are needed. This is a great way to visualise what strings to play, and works for many players! You can absolutely play the full chord shapes as well if you prefer, and you'll achieve the same sound - it's entirely a matter of preference.

Before we hop into the chorus, I want to take a moment to talk about a great point that Thomas makes regarding adding your own variations. You don't need to always play the exact same rhythms and embellishments as the original track.

I strongly encourage you to experiment with your own style of timings to not only change it up, but to make it more personal. As long as you're playing the right chords in the right places, it will still very much sound like 'Fire and Rain'. I am incredibly confident in making the claim that James Taylor will play it slightly differently every time he plays it live.

Chorus

The chorus is a mix of old and new information, as we're repeating a phrase that we learned in the intro! Let's take a look at the new chord we're adding first. The first bar is broken into two chords, D and Bm7 - the specific voicing will be shown below.

We then transition to the same pattern played over the A chord that we played in the intro. Remember, you don't always have to play the exact same patterns, you're more than welcome to put your own spin on it!

These two sub-sections repeat three times before we get to the next new bit of information. We're playing the following chords in sequence - G, D/F# and E7sus, which creates a lovely descending run in the bass notes.

E7sus is a bit of a scary looking chord name, but all we're doing is playing an Esus4, and adding the open D-string to give us the b7 degree. I would confidently bet that James Taylor didn't choose this exact chord for any reason other than it followed the descending pattern perfectly.

The descending run leads us to the last part of the chorus, which is a specific strumming pattern over an Asus2 chord. We need to break the bar into 16th notes to play this strumming pattern correctly - have a look below for the visual breakdown!

Now it's time to put it all together! Check out the image below to see the structure of the chorus:

Outro

I hope you've become confident with the strumming pattern over the Asus2 chord from the end of the chorus, as the outro is simply the same pattern repeated over again until the fade out. To try and match the fade out, try and soften up your strumming to match the fading dynamics. As it's impossible to completely fade out on an acoustic guitar, you'll need to find a place you want to come to a stop. This is ultimately your choice, but I would recommend either finishing on the last up-stroke of the strumming pattern, or on the first down-stroke of the next bar.