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Hi Everyone,

We have a brand new lesson available!

Fall on Me by R.E.M

R.E.M. came on the scene in the early 1980s but finally broke through in 1986 with their fourth album, ‘Life's Rich Pageant’ and the single ‘Fall On Me’.

Guitarist Peter Buck is well known for using an arpeggio syle rather than basic strumming, and this song is a great example. It is done using the cross picking technique rather than alternate picking and is a great place to start if you have not done much cross picking.

Most of the rest is fairly standard strumming, other than the short intro, which is also easily accessible to beginning-intermediate players.

Enjoy!

https://totallyguitars.com/lessons/2556 ... tar-lesson

Glad to see this one. And glad to see you corrected yourself: yes, fourth album. I think calling it their "breakthrough" might be a stretch, but it's arguable, I suppose, since this album won them their first gold, and the track got a bit of radio play (but then, so did the earlier "S. Central Rain" and "Don't Go Back to Rockville). I'd say their real breakthrough came the next year with "Document," and the big hits "The One I Love" and "It's The End of The World..."

I'd love to see some other early REM lessons: "Laughing," "Sitting Still," and "Harborcoat," which might be my favorite tune of theirs. Whether it's their best or not, I think it's the most quintessentially REM REM tune. The jangling, the delicious, slightly-off harmonies, the nonsense, impossible-to-understand lyrics.