Purple rain chords

harpo

Saw Springsteen doing this on a poor quality vid but looks like he was. Doing all the chords at the 5th or 6th fret Can anyone say what shapes they were ?

harpo

stickyfiddle

Saw the vid this morning. Looks like he's capo-d around the 3rd or 4th fret  so he could play it all with open chords while fitting his range vocally. Almost all the guitar chords you can hear sound like Steven Van Zandt's usual clean chorussed strat tone, probably not using a capo

Plectrum

Chords here thanks to the wonder of YouTube

thomasross20

Great sounding chords.

I MUST remember to learn more Prince and Bowie. 

harpo

Thanks guys so can someone post the fingerlings for the chords in the open position ?

John_P

I'd play it as A2,  F#m,  E  D    (normally I'd do it in Bb but the band I was depping with on friday did it in that key - and told me before counting it in,  very glad it's only 4 chords)

thomasross20

Is it only the same 4 chords the whole way through?

Danny1969

I do in A like John_P mentioned ........ never liked B flat as a key for some reason ..... don't trust it

@Thomas, it's not the same progression as the chorus changes the sequence but yes only 4 chords. At Fridays gig I was the only guitarist so I triggered the chords with my feet and sampler on the floor so the solo didn't sound all empty

harpo

Never trust Bb !

richardhomer

Plectrum;1049490" said:

Chords here thanks to the wonder of YouTube

This is wrong.

The second chord isn't a Gmin7, it's the first chord repeated over a G bass note as shown in the video in this thread:

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/73741/chord-of-the-week-23-4-16-a-bbsus2-from-purple-rain-by-prince#latest

bigjon

I'm doing the main progression one chord at a time on Chord Of The Week. Unusually, the recording was videoed so you can see exactly what Wendy Melvoin was playing. First chord plus link to the video is at
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/73741/chord-of-the-week-23-4-16-a-bbsus2-from-purple-rain-by-prince

StanleyAccrington

I play it Csus2..Am7...G...F.

thomasross20

Christ does anybody know the actual chords lol

vasselmeyer

@bogjon I wasn't convinced by your version of the chord. I am almost certain the first actual chord is is:

x10311

I like to imagine that Prince found the opening chord first, thought "that's cool" and wrote a song around it.

stratman3142

thomasross20 said:

Christ does anybody know the actual chords lol

Well I thought they were what @richardhomer said, which is
Bb2  Gm11  F and Eb

By Gm11, I mean, in effect Bb2 but over G, which could also be thought of as Fsus4/G.

When I checked one of my old charts I'd written Eb2 instead of a straight Eb.  So, in answer to your question, I thought I did, but now I'm not so sure

harpo

@stratman3142 Can you show what that set of chords is in the open position?

stratman3142

I'll have a look at it tomorrow night.

breakstuff

This came up in my Youtube feed today if it's any help.Sounds pretty close to me.

hywelg

B  Abm, F#add9, E. But of course he's playing in Eb tuning

DiscoStu

Here is the original performance which became the version on the album, so look and learn.

This has been posted on YouTube before but been pulled so enjoy this one while it lasts.

A phenomenal 13 minutes.