This one is for all you piano-playing Matt Nathanson fans. After listening to Some Mad Hope several times through (which is a great album by the way, highly recommended from a long-time Matt fan) I thought that it would be cool to figure out Heartbreak World, which is the third song on that album. It has really strong piano track and is a lot of fun to play along with, not to mention it’s just a great song.
The basic chords are as follows: E, E/G#, Asus2, B, and C#m. The beginning is just an E, A, E and B played 2 times and then switches to an E/G#, A, E, B played 2 times. The E/G# is basically an E with an G# on the bass, or an Emaj7. The chorus goes into a C#m, Asus2, E, B twice. The versus play out a combination of E, Asus2, E, and B over and over with the E/G# in there on the last two parts until it breaks into the chorus again which is the C#m, Asus2, E, B. That middle bridge part is just an E, Asus2, E, Asus2 and then back into the chorus. You can play these chords on the guitar as well just like that. I play the B with the 1st and 2nd strings open and the C#m with just the 1st string open. It flows better with the Asus2 and the E.
There appears to be several variations of those chords played throughout the song, but behind all the music it’s hard to pick out exactly what is being played. I’ve gone through and tried to pick out the best I can how it’s played, but it’s most certainly not not for note, but is close enough to play along and it sounds pretty good. The transcription is basically how I play it, though for simplicity sake, there was a lot of cut and paste when actually writing it out on some of the parts, but you can feel free to mix up the chords, play double bass where you see fit. You don’t have to play the full 4-note chords either, you can just play the one bass note and the 3 notes in each chord and it still sounds fine, it’s just a little fuller with the full chord in there.
As always, corrections and comments are always welcomed! This is just the first revision, but for now I don’t have much time to keep working on it (and the song is constantly stuck in my head, day in and day out) so I’m posting what I’ve got. This is the whole song, but it’s missing one extra stanza of the chorus part, but it just repeats those chords again. Good luck, and have fun rocking with Matt.
Guitar Chords
EADGBe
022100 E
021100 Emaj7
4×2450 E/G#
x02200 Asus2
x24440 B or
x24400 Bsus4
x46650 C#m
thanks so much!