Hello to all! And welcome to our first Guitar Noise Podcast for 2013.

This year, we’ll occasionally use our podcasts to supplement our song lessons. This one explores ways of strumming Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” using combinations of straight strumming and single note picking and also creates a bit of a bass line.

We hope you enjoy the return of our podcasts and, as always, we welcome your thoughts, questions and suggestions.

Peace.

Liner Notes for “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”

“Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” was a long time coming as a recorded song. Although Billie Joe Armstrong wrote in in 1990, he didn’t bring it up to the rest of Green Day until 1993, while they were putting together material for their breakout major label release, Dookie. No one really knew what to do with the song, though, as it didn’t really mesh with tunes like “Basket Case,” “Welcome to Paradise” or “When I Come Around.”

Four years later when Green Day was determined to make Nimrod a serious step-forward in terms of focusing on creating good songs, “Good Riddance” was one of the thirty songs recorded for consideration on the album. Producer Rob Cavallo suggested adding strings and the rest, as they say, is history. The song got as high as #2 on both Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks and the Australian Singles Chart.

Further Reading:

Dive into our easy guitar arrangement of Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”. It’s a great lesson for letting the notes dictate how you pick them, instead of relying solely on downstroke picking or alternate picking.