Q & A: “Time in a Bottle”

From a (fairly) recent email:

Dear Mr. David Hodge,

I am new to guitar with a few months of experience. I really like Jim Croce’s music, and recently I picked up a DVD by Pete Huttlinger entitled: Learn to Play the Songs of Jim Croce; Guitar Accompaniment and Techniques. I was glancing through the tabs for Time in a Bottle (Maury Muehlelsen’s part for 2nd guitar), and I am confused. Here is the part, the very beginning of it anyway:

And here are my questions:

1) Why is there a capo on the fifth fret and why do you think the musician put it there? My observation: The key is C or Am, puts a Capo on the fifth fret, and plays an Am chord on the tenth fret… this does not make sense to me.

2) The chord for the first measure is an Am; however, this chord does not look like a regular Am. Why and what type of chord is this?

3) There are chords I do not recognize since they are not chords I am used to like C, G, D etc.. Why are there weird chords names like D7/F#, E7 (b9) etc..

After making this list, I kinda feel like this song is too hard or difficult for me right now. Anyhow, thanks for helping me. Oh and sorry for the poor display quality of the photo.

Take Care…

Hi!

Thanks for writing and my apologies for not writing back sooner. Things have been much busier than usual of late and I’m getting more than a bit behind with my email correspondence. Also, please feel free to call me “David.” I appreciate the “Mr. David Hodge,” but it’s truly more formal than you need to be with me.

You’ve asked a lot of questions and I hope that I can answer them all to the best of my abilities. It’s going to get a little involved, so please don’t hesistate to write again if you’re not sure you understand any of the explanations.

A little bit of background on both the song, capos, and on the different philosophies people have when writing out notation:

Time in a Bottle is a song that changes keys. The verses are in the key of D minor (relative minor of the key of F major) and the choruses switch to the key of D major. Many of the intricate arrangements of Jim Croce’s songs are the result of the interplay between his guitar part and that of Maury Muehelsen. Muehelsen. A typical technique of guitar-duos is to have one guitar playing notes on one section of the neck while the second uses a capo to play higher up. This allows both guitars to make use of the ringing open strings and create some cool harmonies. They do the same sort of thing on I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song, with Croce playing in open position and Muehelsen playing with a capo on the seventh fret, if I remember correctly.

As you know from reading some of the earlier posts here on this blog, not to mention my Guitar Noise articles on capos and transposing, when someone plays a second guitar part with a capo, they use the familiar open chord shapes but the capo itself means that they are playing in a different key. Usually, when someone tabs out a guitar part for a guitar with a capo, they use the open position chords as the reference.

Hopefully all of this will help tie in to your questions. So here goes:

1) Why is there a capo on the fifth fret and why do you think the musician put it there? My observation: The key is C or Am, puts a Capo on the fifth fret, and plays an Am chord on the tenth fret… this does not make sense to me.

As mentioned, when we put a capo on the guitar, we raise the chord by the number of half steps equal to the fret where the capo is placed. So putting the capo on the fifth fret means that we have raised all the open string notes (and chords) by five half-steps, which is two-and-a-half steps. So playing an Am chord with the capo on the fifth fret means that you’re playing Dm, which is the key of the verses of Time in a Bottle. If you’d prefer, the key of C is raised two-and-a-half steps, which means it’s the key of F (relative major of D minor), so we’re still good whichever way you’d like to look at it.

We’ll get to the “Am chord on the tenth fret” in just a moment…

As to the “why,” there are all sorts of possible reasons, but the most likely would be that since the song switches between D minor and D major, the second guitar would want to find a place where playing in both the minor and major of a particular key worked out well. For open position chords, the easiest keys to play in both major and minor are D, A and E. Playing in E minor and E major, with the first guitar playing D minor and D major, would mean using a capo at the tenth fret, which most people tend to avoid as it really cramps the amount of space available for one’s fingers.

You’ll notice in both the verses and the chorus of this song that Muehelsen makes use of many open chords as well as arpeggios that make use of open strings. Without a capo, he’d find many of the fingerings for the voicings he wanted to use close to impossible to play.

2) The chord for the first measure is an Am; however, this chord does not look like a regular Am. Why and what type of chord is this?

Any chord is a combination of specific notes. A minor is made up of A, C and E (D minor is made up of D, F and A), so anywhere you can find the notes A, C and E on the fretboard, you are playing an Am chord. For instance (and we’re not using a capo here for this example), if you put your ring finger on the tenth fret of the B string (which is A), your index finger on the ninth fret of the G string (which is E) and your middle finger on the tenth fret of the D string (which is C) and strum all six strings, or even just from the A string down, you’re playing an Am chord.

When two guitarists play together, the harmony is often shared between them. It is implied by all the notes that both guitarists are playing together, so one (or both) guitarists don’t have to play all the notes of the chords involved. In this case, Muehelsen is playing just the A (fifth fret of the E string) and E (fifth fret of the B string) notes of the chord. Taking the capo into account, he’s actually playing D (tenth fret of the high E) and A (tenth fret of the B), so he’s playing two notes of Dm, while Croce’s guitar has the F note (first fret of the high E) as part of an arpeggio.

The chord itself is still Am (Dm with the capo), it is simply a different voicing of the chord, meaning that the notes are being played in different places on the neck than they are played with open position chords.

3) There are chords I do not recognize since they are not chords I am used to like C, G, D etc.. Why are there weird chords names like D7/F#, E7 (b9) etc..

Guitarists are peculiar in that most of them insist that they don’t want or need music theory, but then they go out of their way to describe chords in such a way that they have to know music theory in order to understand them. It’s actually quite amusing when one thinks about it.

What’s going on with the weird chord names is that whoever has written out the chords has decided to base the choice of chord name on the harmony of both Muehelsen’s and Croce’s guitar parts, and then transpose it to Am (or A major in the chorus) to go along with the use of the capo. Things like “D7/F#” are simply “slash chords,” meaning that they are meant to be played with a note other than the chord’s root note in the bass (you can read more about these in the Guitar Noise Easy Song’s for Beginners’ Lesson on Eleanor Rigby, among others). Others, like the “E7(b9)” are based on both guitar parts being played together. You truly don’t need to worry about this too much at present. It shouldn’t keep you from learning the song.

I know that this is a basic and simple explanation. It could get a lot more involved and detailed, but I have been working on a single guitar arrangement lesson of this song for Guitar Noise for quite a while now and it will hopefully be up online sometime this coming spring. And, again hopefully it should answer more of your questions and also give you a way to play a combination of both Muehelsen’s and Croce’s guitar parts as well as an appreciation of how they went about creating their two-guitar arrangement.

As I mentioned, please feel free to again if you need a better explanation than the one I’ve given you. But I do hope this does help you to get started on learning this wonderful song.

Looking forward to chatting with you again.

Peace