Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Yellow

Recently, early Coldplay songs have made a comeback with my teenage guitar students. I had forgotten how extraordinary these songs were, specifically from the first two albums, Parachutes and Rush of Blood to the Head. With “Yellow” I wanted to do a fingerstyle arrangement that was minimalist and subdued — away from the driving nature of the original song.

Composer, Ramin Djawadi (Game of Thrones) famously created cover arrangements for another HBO production, Westworld. Rather than make a generic sing-along backing track, he would take a song like Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box, and reconfigure it as a true instrumental, getting to the essence of the melody.

I try to do the same with my instrumentals. With Yellow, I thought, how would Gustavo Santaolalla play this…if he were arranging it for The Last of Us?

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How to play Yellow | fingerstyle guitar

The guitar tab for this piece is beautifully written across 3 pages. Yellow is best suited to intermediate guitar players and up. Enjoy! The guitar tab is available below:

My song structure looks like this, in accordance with the guitar tab:

Verse 1, To Chorus, Chorus, Chorus End

Verse 2, To Chorus, Chorus, Chorus End

End Verse

**Coldplay: Yellow | fingerstyle guitar

My version is played in a Drop D tuning. From low to high: D A D G B E

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