More Than A Feeling Guitar Lesson

Boston's 'More Than a Feeling' is one of those feel-good tracks that you just always want to sing and play along with. From it's immediately recognisable guitar intro to the power-chord chorus with soaring vocals, this is as good as 70s rock gets! And what makes it even better, is that it's also a ton of fun to learn on guitar!

This lesson is going to break all the sections down, so you can play along with all the chords, riffs, and solos to satiate your rock appetite!

Dion has provided us with two fantastic video lessons detailing everything we need to know about this track. We're going to start with the rhythm parts, and the video lesson for the solo and lead lines will be attached further into this write-up.

As a disclaimer for the entire lesson - there will not be any tabs provided. Please keep referring to the video lesson for the fine details, and the rest will be covered in this blog-post. And with that out the way, let's get into it!

Intro Riff

The iconic intro riff might be the reason that you've come to this lesson, and it's easy to understand why! You'll be pleased to know that it's made up of a handful of open-position chords that might already be familiar to you! Let's have a look at the shapes below:

Dion makes the fantastic suggestion of playing the chords along to a metronome before tackling the specific picking pattern. This helps you understand when the chord shapes need to change, as well as strengthen your muscle memory for the transitions. Once you're confident with this, you'll be able to fully focus on your picking hand to replicate the track perfectly!

Before we move on to the pre-chorus, let's take a very quick look at what the names for some of these chords mean:

Sus4 chords: A sus4 chord is simply a triad with the 3rd degree raised, or suspended, to the 4th degree. So, if our major triad formula is 1 3 5, the sus4 formula would be 1 4 5. Or in terms of notes - D, G and A.

/ chords: Whenever you see a '/' between two letters/chords, it's always an indication to play the chord on left side, and play the note on the right side as the lowest note. For example, G/B tells us to play a G major, but with a B as the bass note.

Add9 chords: This is quite a literal instruction to add the 9th degree (the same as the 2nd degree an octave above) to a triad. So, Cadd9 would be C major + D.

Pre-chorus

The pre-chorus is a short section that is very chord focused. The first half uses the Cadd9 and G/B chords with a slightly altered picking pattern. An important note for both of these chords is that they require the open high e-string. Please be sure to refer to the video to get the exact pattern!

As Dion mentions, there's no 'right' way to pick this, as every player adopts their own style. However, using a combination of both down- and up-strokes will help you maintain the sustain and keep the flow going.

The second half of the pre-chorus is even more straightforward, as we're ditching the picking pattern and strumming just once per beat for each of the following chords: Am, G and D. I've provided the structure of the entire pre-chorus below for you to piece it all together!

Chorus

And just like that, we're at the power-chord driven, feel-good chorus! All we need to play along is four power-chords starting on different root notes - G, C, E and D. For any unfamiliar with what a powerchord is, it's a chord formed of just two notes - the root and the fifth. For example, a C power-chord is made of just the notes C and G.

It's incredibly common to also add an octave of the root note above the fifth degree - this just makes it sound bigger, and fuller! Let's take a look at how we'd play this on a fretboard:

You might have noticed that the chords all have the number '5' in them - the '5' is always an instruction to play a powerchord, as we're just adding the fifth degree to the root.

One final note on powerchords before we look at the strumming pattern for the chorus - this exact shape can be moved around to any fret on both the E- and A-strings. The name/voicing of the chord depends entirely on the fret/note you start it on!

We're going to take a look at this in two parts, as we can break most of it down into eighth notes, with just one exception of sixteenth notes. The first two chords, G5 and C5 are played using the following strumming pattern:

And the following chords, E5 and D5 are played with this pattern:

The keen-eyed viewers amongst you would have seen that Dion is down-stroking all of the beats except for the 16th note pattern. This is to keep the sound of the power-chords consistent and is generally a stylistic feature of rock music.

There is one significant change on the fourth repeat - instead of playing the E5 and D5 chords, we jump straight into an Eb5 after playing the C5 chord. This Eb5 does not belong in the key of G major, and acts as a greatly pivot between the chorus and post-chorus.

As a final note on the chorus, let's take a look at the various ways that Dion is using muting to keep this section as crisp and clear as possible!

Dampening: Dampening is the technique of releasing the pressure on the strings from your fretting hand. If done correctly, you should still be making contact with the strings, not the fretboard, and you should still be playing the same chord shape.

Palm-muting: Possibly the first type of muting most players learn. Palm-muting is quite a literal instruction to rest the side of your palm on the strings near the bridge. The closer you are the bridge, the more the pitch will continue to ring. As you bring your palm-mute closer towards the neck, the more muted the sound will become.

Dion mentions that it sounds best to leave a bit of space between each chord. Either of the aforementioned techniques will be sufficient, but using both together will help you confidently mute every time!

The last little muting technique I want to mention is a bit more subtle. If you watch carefully when Dion plays the power-chords starting on the A-string, you might notice that his index finger is very slightly touching the E-string. Doing this allows Dion to be less careful about what strings he's hitting. This let's him play with the same dynamic for every chord.

Post-chorus

The track features two version of the post-chorus section, with one leading back into a verse, and the other setting up the solo.

Post-chorus 1

The first post-chorus is a bit shorter, and just requires a handful of chords. Let's first take a look at the chords needed that we haven't yet played in the track - E minor, A major, and D/F#.

As this section is relatively straight-forward chord playing, here's the structure to piece it all together:

Post-chorus 2

The second version of the post-chorus has a little bit more going on. Starting the same way with the Em to A chords, we then head straight into a Bm chord while playing a chugging rhythm. Only use down-strokes for the chugs, and be sure to gently palm-mute them to really help get the right tone!

Keeping the chugging rhythm in the right-hand going, we continue descending down chords until we reach one final new chord - Asus4. After a bar of Asus4, we swap to a regular A major, which creates a perfect cadence to bring us back to D major for the solo section.

Solo chords

As I'm pretty confident most of you will want to learn the solo, and to keep this lesson from being an hour-long read, I'm just going to provide you with the structure for the chords under the solo below. As always, the video lesson is your go-to source for all the details!

Re-intro

That leads us into the final part of the rhythm section - well done for making it this far! For the most part, we're simply repeating the intro, just with a bit more gain. Dion has provided an excellent insight into how to craft the right tone at the very end of the lesson if you wanted a bit of guidance!

As the overall dynamic of the track elevates, we need to transition to strumming the chord shapes rather than picking the arpeggios. There is another key difference - instead of ending the phrase on a G major, we're now ending on a Cadd9.

After a few repeats, we hold the Cadd9 for an extra bar before changing to the G/B chord, which then takes us back into a final pre-chorus. Important! When you transition into the pre-chorus from this section, go straight into the A minor. The bars of Cadd9 and G/B at the end of the re-intro replace the same chords at the beginning of the pre-chorus.

And to no one's surprise, the final pre-chorus transitions into a final chorus. This last chorus is exactly same as the previous chorus, but it repeats a handful of times and gradually fades out. As we've covered quite a few different sections, here's a recap of the entire structure of the song:

The lead parts

Hugely well done for learning the track until this point! And if you've skipped ahead to tackle the lead parts - welcome! Just a reminder, there won't be any tabs available in this lesson write-up, but Dion has created a video dedicated to just the lead playing, check it out below!

Pre-chorus lead line

I believe it could be argued that the most iconic lead guitar line in the track is actually the short bit in the pre-chorus, rather than the solo! It's a pretty simple phrase, but follows the chords beautifully, and takes us perfectly into the chorus.

We're staying in the key of G major, and only need a handful of notes within one position.

As Dion mentions, you're free to put your own spin on it by deciding whether you want to use hammer-ons and pull-offs, or bends. The key to making this sound right is in the vibrato - make sure you have plenty of it!

Middle solo

We're finally on to what I'd consider the most fun part of the song to play - that glorious, very singable guitar solo! We've actually modulated into the key of D major for this section, so the scale boxes are going to be very slightly different as we need switch the C natural out for a C#.

The techniques used for this solo are the same as the lead line we just learned for the pre-chorus: bends, vibrato, and legato.

The lead up to the solo starts on the 2nd fret of the B-string (C#), climbing up the D major scale until we land on the 7th fret (F#). From there on, we stay largely in one position - check out the pink notes in the scale boxes below to see all the notes you need! Please be sure to refer to the video for the details of the order of the notes, and fingering where needed!

Dion makes yet another great point to help you learn this solo efficiently - break it into chunks, or phrases to help memorise the different sections. As there are quite a few repeated notes within the same scale shapes, it could be quite over-whelming to try and remember it all in one go. I'd recommend breaking it into about four different sections and gradually piecing them all together!

We need to stray out of the scale box above to wrap the solo up with that brilliant big bend! Though we could stay within one scale box to hit the right notes, we're going to make a position shift to get the right timbre. To play it correctly, catch the 14th fret on the B-string and give it a half-step bend. Release the bend, then pull-off to the 12th fret. Quickly jump to the 17th fret of the high e-string and give it a whole-step bend to complete the solo!

Final pre-chorus lead line

If you've made it this far - well done - and you'll also be very pleased to know that there are just a handful of notes left to learn for the entire track! Once again, we're going to use the same techniques from the previous lead lines - with a real focus on vibrato. Dion also highlights that he's using a wah effect to properly capture the sound for this lick!

The only frets we need for this last lick are the 9th fret on the B-string, and the 10th fret on the high e-string. Both of which require whole-step bends with bold, wide vibrato! And there you have it - that's all you need to learn for this timeless tune!