Our House (Madness) Guitar Lesson with Backing Tracks + TAB

In this guitar lesson, we study ten TAB examples to work out how to play the very clever chords in Our House - Practise with Backing Tracks!

Our House | TAB

When I sat down to transcribe this song, I expected to adapt the piano and horn parts for guitar. It turns out there are actually several guitar parts on the recording that sound great, so I decided to develop those instead.

Here’s the intro. This is played on piano, so you may choose not to play it live — at this point, I was still very much in “transcribe everything” mode.

On the original recording, only the first slide from F to G are played, and at the very end there’s a slide down from C.

Verse

The verse contains just one small guitar part on the recording. In a live situation, you’ll want to contribute more, so I’ve taken that original idea and developed it.

Although I like that part, the original is played higher up the neck, so try this version as well:

Let’s go even higher and vary the ending shape. I feel it sounds stronger to stay high before the repeat, then finish lower as we transition into the next section:

Finally, in idea 4, we move into a breakdown built around a bass line. Here’s that part, including the breakdown section:

Our House TAB, verse idea 4 and breakdown.

Chorus

The chorus uses the same chords as the verse, but transposed to different keys. On the recording, only the first note is played< I added the rhythms that follow it.

In chorus three, we change key again:

For the outro chorus, we go all out:

Middle 8

The middle 8 is the super-fast section. To balance that energy, I felt that playing longer chord shapes worked best. There is no guitar here on the original recording.