September 15, 2018 by DavidJP 0 comments

Welcome!

Welcome back to another tutorial! This time I transcribe Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers.

Just A Regular Guy

William Harrison Withers Jr. was born on Independence Day 1938 in a small coal mining town in West Virginia. He was born with a stutter and had a hard time socialising as a result. However he enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 18 and served for 9 years during which time he overcame his stutter.

He became interested in songwriting and moved to Los Angeles in 1967 to pursue his new interest. Using the money he earned from working various jobs, he funded his own recordings and played in various clubs at night.

Even though he was active as a singer-songwriter from 1963 until 1985, success only found him in 1970 at the age of 32. He attributes this late success as the reason why he found it easy to leave music behind. He was just a regular guy who had a life before music.

His disdain for Columbia’s A&R executives or “blaxperts”, as he termed them, trying to exert control over how he should sound if he wanted to sell more albums, played a part in his making the decision to not record or re-sign to a record label after 1985. This effectively ended his performing career, even though remixes of his previously recorded music were released after his ‘retirement’.

During his career he played with some of the greats, notably Steven Stills, James Brown, Etta James and B. B. King. He performed in Zaire in 1974 four weeks before the George Foreman/Muhammad Ali fight and featured in the 1996 documentary “When We Were Kings”.

His hits include “Lean on Me”, “Ain’t No Sunshine”, “Use Me”, “Just the Two of Us”, “Lovely Day”, and “Grandma’s Hands”. Withers won three Grammy Awards and was nominated for four more. Many artists covered his songs including Michael Jackson. His life was the subject of the 2009 documentary film Still Bill. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 by Stevie Wonder, an event which greatly surprised him.

“I see it as an award of attrition,” he says. “What few songs I wrote during my brief career, there ain’t a genre that somebody didn’t record them in. I’m not a virtuoso, but I was able to write songs that people could identify with. I don’t think I’ve done bad for a guy from Slab Fork, West Virginia.”

History

“Ain’t No Sunshine” is on Withers’ 1971 album “Just As I Am” and was a breakthrough hit. It reached number six on the U.S. R&B Chart and number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

He wrote the song after watching the 1962 movie “Days of Wine and Roses”. He explained, in reference to the main characters, “They were both alcoholics who were alternately weak and strong. It’s like going back for seconds on rat poison. Sometimes you miss things that weren’t particularly good for you. It’s just something that crossed my mind from watching that movie, and probably something else that happened in my life that I’m not aware of.”

“Ain’t No Sunshine” ranks 285th on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song won the Grammy for Best R&B Song in 1972 and appears on the original soundtrack album for the film “When We Were Kings“, and in “American Crime Story”. The song reached the Top 40 again in 2009, sung by Kris Allen in the 8th season of American Idol.

Versions Of Ain’t No Sunshine

In this post I’ve transcribed the song twice. The first is a simplified version suitable for beginners of RGT Acoustic Grade 1-2. The second is a more complicated version which is the transcription of Withers’ guitar part in the video below. I have included sections of the transcription in this post with both scores available for download in PDF form at the bottom of the post.

Simplified Version

Chords

The simplified version of Ain’t No Sunshine uses three chords, detailed in the following excerpt:

As you can see, the chords are relatively simple as long as you take care to not muffle any of the strings.

The key is A minor, given by the key signature in this diagram:

Between the treble clef and time signature no sharp or flatted notes are indicated. This means that the key is either C major or A minor. The first and last chords indicate the key of A minor conclusively. The time signature is 4/4 time, indicating four crotchet beats per measure.

Also in the above diagram you can see the picking directions. These are recommended but feel free to adjust them for a musical result.

Verses

In the verse section detailed above you will see that the playing is quite sparse.

Keep to the rhythm and let the chords ring out throughout. This lets the song ‘breathe’ a bit more and give your voice room to sing.
Change between the chords at a steady slow tempo. Use single strums at first until you are used to the changes.
Keep each chord clear. It’s very easy to obstruct the G on the Am7 chord. Use your fingertips.
When you are comfortable, tap your foot along with the pulse. This improves your rhythm and is a good indicator of your tempo to those around you.

The verses are all the same format. This simplified version is not meant to be exhaustive, but shows you how to get an effective result until your skill increases sufficiently to play the more complicated version. I haven’t included the bridge here, but see below.

Actual Version

Chords

The chords in this transcription are a little more complicated. To play the G7 you have to use fingers 3 and 4 spread slightly, and this is tricky to achieve at first. Be patient, and pay attention to the strings that are meant to ring. In other words, don’t worry about the A or High E strings in this one. The Em7 voicing is unusual, and the partial bar on the Dm7 is tricky to adjust to. Concentrate on getting the B and E strings to ring out first. Then add in the G string note. Practice until clear, then add the D string root.

Time And Key Signature

Both of these are the same as indicated above. The key of A minor uses the notes A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and is the relative of C major. The chords therefore are voicings for these chords diatonic to A minor:

i chord (Am),
the v chord (Em),
the VII7 chord (G7),
the v7 chord (Em7)
and the vi7 chord (Dm7).

Fingerings

As you can see above, the key and time signatures are the same as the simplified version. This makes sense as to have a simplified rhythmic and harmonic framework these need to be the same.

You can also see letters beside the notes on the staff notation. This indicates the picking hand fingering for each note.

p = thumb
i = index finger
m = middle finger
a = ring finger

You can use a pick instead of your thumb but you will also need to use your little finger to strike the B string as the index finger will be taken out of use. Also, bear in mind that you will generate a louder note with the pick and the tone will be subtly different. If you can adapt and get a good result, go for it! 🙂

Verses

Here you can see the first verse. Points to note:

The rhythm indicates steady quavers for the most part. Count “1+2+3+4+” to get a feel for it.
Let the Am chord in bar 2 ring out for the full duration. Don’t mute it or stop it early. Let the song breathe.
The progression of the first 2 bars is i,v,VII7, i, and is repeated twice.
You use chord v7 for the fifth bar, then iv7 for the sixth, before repeating the above progression at the end.
Use this format for the first and second verses (the second verse is actually the repeat). The bridge is played after the second verse.
The final verse is subtly different. See below.

Bridge

Ok, so we have some funny looking “X” markings here. These tell you to slap the soundboard of the guitar in a steady semiquaver rhythm. No note is indicated as the sound you’ll generate won’t have a discernible pitch.

Count “1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a” To get the feel the proper rhythm, but make sure the tempo stays the same. The rhythm gets faster, not the speed of the song. If you find it tricky to maintain a steady tempo, use a metronome for your main beats.

Above, you can see that the bridge is actually only six bars long. This is deceptively short because Withers’ repeated use of the phrase “I know….” during this section uses a semiquaver-quaver rhythm, and he sings it 26 times. This fast rhythm along with the amount he repeats it gives a false sense of length to the bridge.

At bars 13 and 14 you can see a “Vocal resume” indicator. It’s at this point that he resumes singing words other than the repeated “I know…” phrase. The rests in bars 13 and 14 are semibreve rests, indicating that you make sure the guitar is silent during these bars. This gives the vocals sonic space and gives the start of the final verse more impart.

Final Verse

Above you can see the final verse and it’s pretty much the same as the first two with a small structural change. You play the first chord progression (i, v, VII7,i) an extra time, presumably to allow Withers to sing all of the lyrics he had written for the song. Indeed, it’s worth noting that he had more lyrics written for the bridge of Ain’t No Sunshine, but he dropped them in favour of his now famous reprise (“I know… I know…”) because of his bandmates advice.

Outro

At the end of the song you play the main chord progression as the last line is repeated. The “rall.” indicator in bar 27 means “rallentando” and this is an instruction telling you to slow down from this point. It lets the listener know that the song is ending, and provides a quite end to a great song.