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The Opposite of Afterglow

Great Big Beautiful World guitar tutorials

Jazz Guitar tutorial

One of my favorite songs on the new album is Great Big Beautiful World, a bossa nova inspired mellow ballad that I really like playing. I like playing it so much I want to teach people how to do it!

This is the jazz/electric guitar version, which is the featured instrument on the recording. I also made a tutorial for an acoustic guitar version, which is a little simpler and has more open chords that sound good on acoustic. That’s below.

To help with the chords I made lead sheets that have guitar chord diagrams, here’s the jazz guitar lead sheet, and the acoustic lead sheet.

This is my first attempt at a legit guitar tutorial, let me know what you think!

Acoustic Guitar tutorial

Great Big Beautiful World live in studio

One of my favorite songs on The Opposite of Afterglow, the new album from The Green L.E.D.s project, is the bossa nova infused ballad Great Big Beautiful World. It’s probably the one I’m the most proud of too. I really like the chord progression and I think the melody weaves through it and ties it together nicely.

I’m also really happy with the lyrics. Not only do they match the feel of the music, they express something I’ve been feeling a lot the last several years—a peaceful awe of being in the moment infused with a dose of melancholy from being aware of the absolute shit-show we humans make of this place.

Anyway, enough of me talking about it, lemme play it:

Learn how to play the song here!

Back in the day whenever I would post a clip of me playing something, someone would inevitably comment “tabs,” demanding guitar tabs for whatever I played. Since I like this song so much and would be beyond flattered and thrilled if anyone else wanted to play it, I made not 1 but 2 guitar tutorials for it! The first tutorial is for the jazz guitar version I play here, the second is an acoustic guitar version that uses more open chords and is a little simpler. (It’s the acoustic guitar part layered in the background of the studio recording). Check ’em out and play along!

It’s Here!!

The new album from The Green L.E.D.s is here!

If you guys enjoy The Opposite of Afterglow half as much as I enjoyed making it then it’s gonna rock your socks off, because I had a blast putting this together. I started working on the first tracks a little over a year ago with some ideas for a few new songs. The more I worked on it the more ideas I had and soon I realized I could have a full new album on my hands.

At the time I was working on lyric videos for The American Songbook: Redacted, and preparing the live show for a run at the Edmonton International Fringe Theater Fest, so I took my time with this project.  I didn’t give myself a deadline for the album and as a result it had room to breathe and grow. I think that comes across in the sound. It’s cohesive and confident, it has a solid foundation but it takes some turns and hopefully has a few surprises.

You can buy the album digitally at bandcamp, and there is a very limited number of CDs available at our online store. I originally planned to release the album digital only, but I really wanted to have something to hold in my hands when it was done. Besides, these streaming services can all disappear without any warning and then where’s the music?

But while those streaming services are around, please stream the heck out of it! It’s at Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and I’ll track down the others soon.

In fact, I’ll put a bandcamp player right below so you can listen right on this page! Give it a spin!

© Paravonian