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April 2023 update: Mister Sam transcription added
I've been a big fan of the music of Steely Dan for many years.
As a guitar player who loves great-sounding progressions with interesting jazz-flavoured chords, working out guitar transcriptions for these songs has been an education as well as a pleasure.
These songs are great fun to play on the guitar, and they're also a great way to extend and improve your playing. I hope you enjoy playing them!
All of the Steely Dan and Donald Fagen guitar transcriptions I've done are listed below.
Some have guitar tablature, some just chords, and some have a mixture of the two.
Links are provided to HTML formatted versions as well as plain text format versions of each transcription.
Latest update (April 2023):
Guitar chords/tab for Mister Sam (Katy Lied outtake)
What I've tried to do with these transcriptions is to capture the "essence of the song" in a single guitar part. The chord shapes and voicings that I choose should reflect the main ideas from the rhythm instruments (piano/keyboards, guitar, bass) and perhaps also from the vocals and brass parts. Because Steely Dan songs use complex, jazz-influenced harmonies, a compromise sometimes has to be made between authenticity and playability. In most cases, however, the chords I've suggested are not difficult to play yet capture the key harmonic ideas of the song.
This page explains how keyboard players can interpret guitar tablature and chord shapes and convert this info into note names, allowing you to play the guitar transcriptions on the keyboard.
I'm always happy to receive comments or questions relating to these Steely Dan transcriptions. Please note that all the Steely Dan and Donald Fagen guitar tabs I have done are listed here. The songs I work out and add to this page are usually ones that I enjoy listening to or playing along to the most. I try to add new transcriptions when I can, but it's getting harder to find the time these days.
Send any feedback or questions about these Steely Dan tabs here.
Last updated: April 2023
All information in these pages © copyright Howard Wright 2002-2023