Sleepwalk - Larry Carlton
Hey hey, I finally managed to write down Tabs and some tips for this cover.. after 4 years from my video :)
Before you start
Download Tabs and read my Tips below, you might find them useful for your practice!
TABS: https://www.nicolobertoncello.com/tabs
Full Cover
Tips
"Sleepwalk", originally composed by "Santo & Johnny", is a pretty easy tune in terms of chords and melody..the difficult part is being able to get Larry's tone(made of both his hands and gear)!
In order to do that, make sure your bending technique is on point and that your vibrato follows the rhythm. "Heavy" or "B.B. King" style vibrato are not allowed here.
There are no super fast sections in this song but some parts, expecially the solo, requires you to have some dexterity in playing triads..Larry loves them!
You don't need any kind of theory/harmony knowledge to follow my tabs but, if you want to learn more Larry's songs, I suggest you learn your triads(yes, again) and arpeggios around the entire neck.
Harmony
The song revolves around the C Maj tonality and it’s made more interesting by little variations created using borrowed chords from C min(C Maj's parallel key).
In the Intro/verse
||: C | Am | Fm | G :||
C, Am and G come from the Triad Harmonization of C Maj:
- C Maj Harmonization(triads) -> C Dm Em F G Am Bdim
Fm comes from the Triad Harmonization of C min:
- C min Harmonization(triads) -> Cm Ddim Eb Fm Gm Ab Bb
Basically, the C Maj progression "borrows" Fm from C min resulting in a quick variation that gives a different color to the progression. What happens here is NOT a modulation. There is no tonality change. Borrowed chords are just passing chords.
Same thing happens in the Chorus with Fm and Bb.
Chorus
||: F | F | Fm | Fm | C | F | C | C7 |
| F | F | Fm | Fm | G | Bb | G | G |
C7 I think is a secondary dominant, used to underline, even more, the cadence V - I to F
Bb is a borrowed chord from Cm
Solo
Modulation to Eb Major
The basic progression should be
||: Eb | Cm | Ab | Bb :||
but I hear other different things going on with the keyboards over Cm and Bb7, probably substitutions.. I’m not going into that matter tho!
After the solo we stay in Eb so the new chords are
Chorus
||: Ab | Ab | Abm | Abm | Eb | Ab | Eb | Eb7 |
| Ab | Ab | Abm | Abm | Bb | Db | Bb | Bb |
Verse
||: Eb | Cm | Ab | Bb :||
Hope this helped :)
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