While My Guitar Gently Weeps

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The song was ranked #135 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time and #7 on their list of the 100 greatest guitar songs of all time.

Inspiration for the song came to Harrison when reading the I Ching, which, as he put it, "seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else...opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental." Taking this idea of relativism to his parents’ home in northern England, Harrison committed to write a song based on the first words he saw upon opening a random book. Those words were “gently weeps”, and he immediately began the song. As he said:

"I wrote "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" at my mother's house in Warrington. I was thinking about the Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes... The Eastern concept is that whatever happens is all meant to be, and that there's no such thing as coincidence - every little item that's going down has a purpose.

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was a simple study based on that theory. I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book - as it would be a relative to that moment, at that time. I picked up a book at random, opened it, saw 'gently weeps', then laid the book down again and started the song."

• George Harrison – double-tracked vocal, backing vocal, acoustic guitar, Hammond organ
• Paul McCartney – backing vocal, piano, organ, bass
• John Lennon – electric guitar
• Ringo Starr – drums, tambourine
• Eric Clapton – lead guitar

Common Keys: =Am, First Melodic Interval: P5 ↑ M2

Performance Notes

For the slash chords, the Am/G, Am/F# and Am/F. You can just stick with the basic Am chords. The note after the slash is a descending bass line that we can not get in a ukulele with a high fourth string.

MuseScore Resources

• While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Ukulele Arrangement

MuseScore is a FREE Open Source and the World’s most popular music notation software with a lot of great sources of scores, tutorials, and reference material. I use it on my iMac and Linux system. Finally get to bag the subscription for Sibelius.

Musescore files can be played back as an aide in learning a part.

Web Resources

• (While My Guitar(uke) Gently Weeps)- Curt Sheller (me)
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps by Jake Shimabukuro- Jake's well deserved world success was accelerated after this video was shot by Jason Tagg for his show Midnight Ukulele Disco in Strawberry Fields in Central Park. This video on>YouTube has received over 15 million views.
• Eric Clapton - Concert for George()
• WidipediA: While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• WidipediA: Jake Shimabukuro, playing a ukulele in place of the guitar portions of the song, on the album Gently Weeps.