Kpopalypse tabs: Taeyang – Eyes, Nose, Lips

While I work on several other posts that are only half-formed in my head and will probably take a while to appear, here’s another piece of music worked out, explained and played by Kpopalypse for all the musical caonimas out there!

Taeyang – Eyes, Nose, Lips

Some readers may be surprised to see “Eyes, Nose, Lips” make the cut for Kpopalypse tabs, as it’s well-documented that I hate this fucking song, if you ask me it really sucks a camel’s poody hole.  However, because quite a few people asked me very nicely to do this song, and it’s honestly a pretty simple song to do that wasn’t too much trouble, I worked it out for you all anyway.  I’m not one to let my personal subjective music taste get in the way of a little bit of education and fun times for my musical readers, so hopefully the below is useful to you!

Structure and timestamps

Intro – 0:24
Verse – 0:31
Chorus – 1:23
Verse – 1:54
Chorus – 2:47
Bridge – 3:14
Chorus+ – 3:42

Key and time signatures

C Major – 4/4

Each verse is two passes through the following eight bars:

| C – – – | Em/B – – – | Am – – – | E7/G# – – – | F – – – | C – – – | E – – – | F – Fm –

Each chorus is two passes through the following four bars:

| C – – – | E – – – | Am – Am/G – | F – Fm –

The bridge is three times through:

| C – C/Bb – | Am7 – Am7/G# –

And then:

| C – C/Bb – | F – Fm –

After that it goes to “Chorus+” which is what I call a “Eurovision key change” – the chorus is repeated but transposed up one semitone.  This makes the final chorus two passes through the following chords:

| C# – – – | F – – – | Bb – Bb/Ab – | F# – F#m

Note as usual that when two chords have a slash between them, the one on the left is the chord and the one on the right is actually the bassnote, so Em/B is “E minor with B as the bassnote”.

Just like with the “Day By Day” tab, I’ve taken a little creative license with the chords to suit my preferences.  For instance I’m pretty sure in the verses it’s E/G# not E7/G# but E7/G# works a lot nicer on guitar so that’s why I used it.  Don’t expect these tabs to be 100%, I’m more interested in capturing the feel of the song in a way that makes musical sense rather than recreating every single note the way it is on the original.

Here’s my scribble notes for the song, plus a video of myself playing it with Taeyang singing.  Taeyang’s a little out of the camera shot but he was okay with not being filmed, he was having a bad hair day and knew that he couldn’t compete with the pure sexiness of Kpopalypse.  I make a couple of fuckups (most notably I forget the change at the end of the bridge) but the video isn’t so I can be all perfect and shit, it’s only to give you an idea of how the chords fit with the vocals in practice, and also so guitarists can take a look at the chord shapes in action.

Although most of this is easy-peasy on guitar, there’s a couple of tricky chords, and I still managed to fuck up a few notes as you’ll hear in the video, mind you I only gave it about ten minutes of practice after I learned how to play it.  To help you out so you can do a slightly better job than me, here’s all the unique chords in the song and the frettings that I’m using.  The numbers show the frets from sixth string to first, where 0 is an open string and x is a string that is muted or isn’t played:

C – x32010
Em/B – x22000
Am – x02210
E7/G# – 420210
F – 133211
C – x32010
E – 022100
Fm – 133111
Am/G – 3×2210
C/Bb – x12010
Am7 – x02010
Am7/G# – I don’t bother with this chord, I just play the G# bassnote and pick out the melody shown in the scribble notes
C# – x4666x
Bb – x1333x
Bb/Ab – 4x333x
F# – 244322
F#m – 244222

I played this one fingerstyle because a few people expressed disappointment that I didn’t attempt fingerstyle for “Day By Day”, and I wanted to give you guys something different to see.  The picking pattern I’m using is slightly improvised but is 99% thumb-index-middle-ring-middle-index-thumb-index, however I just use fingernail strumming in the choruses for dynamics.  For the guitar fans, note that this song is played on a Gretsch Americana G4530 “Sweethearts” acoustic, which is a nice 3/4 size steel string guitar which sounds amazingly good for such a cut-size instrument.  I’ve also used a better microphone for this recording so you get a good sense of what the guitar sounds like.

Anyway that’s all from this post, let me know what you’d like to see next!  Also don’t worry if I haven’t responded to your tab request – it may be coming in a future episode!