I already tweeted about this song some time ago, but I’ve been enjoying playing this acoustic version on guitar so much that I wanted to talk more about it, a nice summer song that it is. Jack Johnson has been a big inspiration for me with the guitar. I found his music at a time when I was struggling with barre chords. Learning some of his songs that he plays with barre chords only, those uncomfortable chord shapes started becoming a second nature.

Sure, you could use a capo and play them with mostly open chords, but then you’d lose some of the sound and feel the left hand muting techniques bring to his songs. My guitar currently has the strings quite close to the fretboard (low action, as it is called), which makes barre chords lighter to play, as well as makes it possible to use some of the percussive techniques Jack uses.

I feel that Jack has gotten many little things right in his songs; they usually work for me very well. I think I have learned a lot about music by listening to his songs, there’s so much space in there that it’s easy to recognize different things.

This version of The Horizon Has Been Defeated is played in D with all open chords. The picking pattern is similar to what he uses in his song The News from the album Brushfire Fairytales, so it was easy to pick up after playing that song. This version of the song made it to the UK release of his album On and On (which my copy is not). But here he plays it on a radio show.