Kacey Musgraves, Photo: Kelly Christine Sutton
Among the standout tracks on Kacey Musgraves’ Much deeper Well, the most recent release by the seven-time Grammy winner, is “Too Good to Be True,” an intimate ballad about opening to a brand-new relationship. Like the majority of the album, this tune is constructed on layers of acoustic guitar, with fingerstyle parts that are so carefully laced it’s typically difficult to choose the private instruments.
Musgraves composed “Too Good to Be True” with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk, her main songwriting and producing group on the entire Deeper Well album in addition to formerly on star-crossed (2021) and Golden Hour (2018 ). In addition, “Too Good to Be True” credits Anna Nalick as an author, for interpolations from her fantastic tune “Breathe (2 AM).” The connection in between the 2 tunes depends on the tune and chord development of the verse, however it’s more a resemblance than a precise quote. “Too Good to Be True” remains in a various meter (4/4 versus 6/8 for “Breathe”) and makes a couple of chord replacements, such as Bm7 for D in the verse.
Both Tashian and Fitchuk play acoustic guitar on the album track, in addition to a 3rd acoustic part by Todd Lombardo, developing an abundant mix that completely fits Musgraves’ peaceful vocal. The tune sounds in the secret of Ab significant. The main part, revealed here, is on a guitar tuned down a half action, utilizing A shapes. In current live efficiencies by Musgraves with her band, a 2nd guitar player utilizes E shapes at capo 4, while she plays G shapes at capo 1. In distilling the tune to one guitar part, I’ve consisted of some information that might have been played initially on a higher-capo guitar.
For the introduction, play the eight-bar pattern revealed, with your thumb choosing the rotating bass and your fingers including treble notes on the offbeats. When going from G to Bm7, keep your ring finger worrying the D note on string 2. Continue this development through the verse. This standard selecting pattern stays the exact same through the majority of the tune, with simply a couple of brief decorations.
The notation consists of the melodic riff that leads into the 2nd chorus − used keyboard in addition to guitar. In the chorus, on the very first 2 times through the Em– G– Aadd9 development, utilize a sus4 decoration on the Aadd9 to lead back to Em. I’ve transcribed one decoration utilized on the track– do not hesitate to comprise your own variations. What I’ve identified the interlude is basically a crucial repeat of the last 2 lines of the chorus. From there, liquidate the tune with a partial verse and a dreamy Aadd9.
Due to copyright constraints, we are not able to publish notation or tablature for this musical work. If you have a digital or physical copy of theSeptember/October 2024 problem ofAcoustic Guitarpublication