{"id":148277,"date":"2025-10-08T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=148277"},"modified":"2025-10-06T12:41:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T19:41:30","slug":"when-im-sixty-four-learn-a-fun-hybrid-picked-arrangement-of-this-time-honored-beatles-tune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/when-im-sixty-four-learn-a-fun-hybrid-picked-arrangement-of-this-time-honored-beatles-tune\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen I\u2019m Sixty-Four\u201d\u2014Learn a Fun, Hybrid-Picked Arrangement of This Time-Honored Beatles Tune"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Play the Beatles\u2019 \u201cWhen I\u2019m Sixty-Four\u201d in a Fun, Hybrid-Picked Arrangement\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GrJjGn9WWBE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Paul McCartney was only 16 when he wrote the tune to \u201cWhen I\u2019m Sixty-Four,\u201d and still a young lad of 24 when he finished the song with the Beatles in 1966 for <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4gVgxBj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/a><\/em>. Nearly 60 years later, with McCartney long past the song\u2019s age marker, \u201cWhen I\u2019m Sixty-Four\u201d sounds as fun and fresh as ever. And though there\u2019s almost no guitar on the Beatles track except for a few touches of John Lennon\u2019s electric in the last verse, \u201cWhen I\u2019m Sixty-Four\u201d makes a great guitar song\u2014whether played with a pick, fingers, or hybrid style, as I do in this arrangement.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most prominent instruments on the <em>Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/em> track are woodwinds\u2014two B<strong>\u266d<\/strong> clarinets and a bass clarinet, which producer George Martin helped arrange\u2014along with piano, bass, and drums. The song was recorded in the key of C but sped up for the album to make it \u201csound more rooty-tooty,\u201d as McCartney put it in Barry Miles\u2019 biography <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/42OZ7kj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Many Years from Now<\/a><\/em>. This arrangement uses the original key of C; to play along with the album key of C\u266f, place a capo on the first fret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The core rhythm here is a swing-style alternating bass\/strum, as in measure 5 of the notation, with staccato chords that you can play as mostly string percussion with minimal pitch. In the song\u2019s refrain (\u201cWill you still need me\u2026\u201d), I switch to punchy quarter-note strums.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Beatles track has lots of nice little melodic bits, especially on clarinet, that I wanted to include on guitar, and that\u2019s where the hybrid picking comes in. In the intro (which also serves as the outro), play the up-stemmed melody with your fingers and down-stemmed bass notes with the pick\u2014or just use your fingers if you prefer. The G walk-up, shown in measures 6\u20137, punctuates the fourth line of the verse and leads to a stop on C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In bridge 1, McCartney doesn\u2019t sing on the first four bars\u2014the clarinets add a melody instead. I play the clarinet melody atop the chords in this section, as shown in measures 8\u201311. In the second bridge, because there <em>is<\/em> a vocal line, I just play a bass\/strum pattern. The chord melody continues in the bridge through measure 15; the melodic riff over the E chord comes from the background vocals.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The original \u201cWhen I\u2019m Sixty-Four\u201d has no instrumental break, but it\u2019s fun to take a pass through the verse playing the melody with touches of the chords. I play the solo shown in the notation with pick only, mainly because I can give it more rhythmic drive that way, but it also works nicely played hybrid or fingerstyle. Playing the melody requires a few new chord shapes (not included in the chord library) in measures 37\u201339, such as a D9 and G6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve performed this song a bunch as a duet with Wendy Sassafras Ramsay on clarinet, and it never fails to make audiences smile. This young man\u2019s tongue-in-cheek imagining of old age somehow never gets old. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Due to copyright restrictions, we are unable to post notation or tablature for this musical work. If you have a digital or physical copy of the\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/store.acousticguitar.com\/collections\/back-issues\/products\/no-354-september-october-2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>September-October <\/em>2025<em>\u00a0issue<\/em><\/a><em> of\u00a0<\/em>Acoustic Guitar<em>\u00a0magazine, you will find the music on page 51.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/store.acousticguitar.com\/products\/no-354-september-october-2025\" name=\"magazine\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 150px; height: 198px; margin: 0px 20px 10px 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/001_354_Cover-150px.jpg?w=1290&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Acoustic Guitar magazine cover for issue 350\"><\/a>\n<p style=\"font-family: sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 15px 0px;\">This article originally appeared in the <a href=\"https:\/\/store.acousticguitar.com\/products\/no-354-september-october-2025\">September\/October 2025<\/a> issue of <em>Acoustic Guitar<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhen I\u2019m Sixty-Four\u201d makes a great guitar song\u2014whether played with a pick, fingers, or hybrid style, as it\u2019s arranged here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":148279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"\u201cWhen I\u2019m Sixty-Four\u201d makes a great guitar song\u2014whether played with a pick, fingers, or hybrid style, as it\u2019s arranged here.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,1659],"tags":[1971],"ppma_author":[1559],"class_list":["post-148277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lessons","category-rock-pop-singer-songwriter","tag-september-october-2025"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/The-Beatkes-Alamy.jpg?fit=1200%2C837&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1559,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"jeffrey-pepper-rodgers","display_name":"Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/About-Us-8.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/About-Us-8.jpg"},"author_category":"","user_url":"https:\/\/www.jeffreypepperrodgers.com\/","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, founding editor of <em>Acoustic Guitar<\/em>, is a grand prize winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and author of <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3P3hwn9\"><em>The Complete Singer-Songwriter<\/em><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/store.acousticguitar.com\/collections\/instruction\/products\/beyond-strumming\"><em>Beyond Strumming<\/em><\/a>, and other books and videos for musicians. In addition to his ongoing work with <em>AG<\/em>, he offers live workshops for guitarists and songwriters, plus video lessons, song charts, and tab, on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/jeffreypepperrodgers\" target=\"blank\">Patreon<\/a>.\r\n"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148277"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148890,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148277\/revisions\/148890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148277"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=148277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}