Learn "Hollywood Cactus": a Tex-Mex polka, taught as a whole song

What the song is. "Hollywood Cactus" is an original Tex-Mex polka, written for this course in the style the sources describe on "Ain't No Saguaro in Texas". It is the same kind of song, not the song: no lyric, melody or line of the record is in it (see How this was made).^[1]

KeyG major, at the nutTempo176 bpmTime4/4Length62 barsWords3 verses, 1 chorus

Each bar of the tab is two bars of the dance's 2/4. The words are about a movie-prop cactus in a Texas front yard, and the joke is sung straight.

• You need: standard tuning, a flatpick and a clean tone.
• You should already have: the open chords, one barre chord (the F), palm muting, and reading tab.
• If the runs and the 3rds are new: from lesson 5 on, every section's card has an easy tab above it — the same bars with the chords alone, the bass and the chop — and so does the whole song's in lesson 11. Play the course through on those first, then as written.

The form. Nine sections, sixty-two bars, in this order:^{[11] [10]}

the tune in 3rds, on the guitar   the oom-pah under the singer   ·   the numbers are the chords' places in the key, the trio's in its own key of C

The verse is the plainest polka verse there is. The chorus's vi gives a bar of shade and its II7 pulls into the V7. The trio is the polka's trio in the subdominant, with the one barre chord in the song, and its last bar turns back to G. The verse, chorus and trio are presets under Psychobilly in the Jam tab.

Tone and style. One guitar does two instruments' jobs over a conjunto's band:^{[10] [15]}

• The band: the kick on every beat, the snare and the slapped upright on every "and", no comp.
• The guitar as the bajo sexto: the oom-pah with the heel of the picking hand on the bass strings, so the bass note thuds and the chop clicks.
• The guitar as the accordion: the tune in 3rds, clean and ringing, one downstroke a pair.
• The hands: a flatpick, no fingers, no bar.

The model, and the conjunto polka. What the sources say about "Ain't No Saguaro in Texas":

• The sound: a polished Nashville country mood over a mariachi polka beat, out to set Hollywood straight about its comical cactus.^[1]
• The players: Tim Alexander on accordion and bajo sexto beside Jim Heath's guitar. This course puts what those two do on one guitar.^[2]
• Tempo and key: 140 bpm to the polka's beat by a tempo site, and a major key with plain chords and one minor chord in the chorus by a chord site. This song runs faster, at 176 bpm.^{[3] [4]}
• Where it comes from: the album leans country, Heath said, and the Tex-Mex in it is Corpus Christi, where he played in bands with Mexican-Americans.^{[5] [6] [7]}

Under all of it is the conjunto polka, which the sources describe like this. Every part of it is in the song:^{[8] [9] [10] [11] [12]}

• The tempo is a bright 2/4 at 120 bpm to 150 bpm with the "oom-pah" bass pattern.
• The bajo sexto strums roots and 5ths, steady and percussive.
• The accordion leads the tune in parallel 3rds and 6ths.
• The progressions are major-key I–IV–V, with secondary dominants for lift.
• The strains are eight or sixteen bars, then a trio in the subdominant.

The grips. Seven open chords and one barre:

• The verse: G, C, D7.
• The chorus: Em, A7.
• The trio: F (the barre at the 1st fret, or the small F until the barre is there) and G7.

Every grip is played the same way: a bass note on the beat, the top three strings on the "and". A line under each diagram says which string the bass note is on, and the chop is the top three strings of whatever chord the hand holds.

The oom-pah. The bajo sexto's job is steady, percussive strums on roots and 5ths, locked to the bass.^{[10] [15] [16]} One bar, eight strokes, straight:

• The bass note is played with the heel of the picking hand on the string, so it thumps and keeps its pitch.
• The chop is one short upstroke through the G, B and high E strings, stopped at once by the side of the picking hand, so it clicks with a little pitch in it. The fret hand cannot shorten it: the grips are open chords, and an open string rings whatever the fingers do.
• Root and 5th only: the bass under the chops never goes anywhere else in this song — the walk-ups, the runs and the fills are the bass's own bars, and the figure keeps to the two notes.

The walk-ups. In the last two beats before a change the bass walks up into the new root, so the change is heard coming. Beats one and two keep the figure; beats three and four are the walk, and the new root lands on the next beat:

The degrees are the chord you are going to, not the one you are leaving. A change whose new root sits on the low E — the Em, the trio's F — is walked down into, four eighths stepping onto it, since a walk that climbs and then lands an octave under itself sounds wrong; and the walk home into the G opens on the C at the A string's 3rd fret, not the open D. Which walk goes where:

All three live on the low E and A strings under the index and ring, with the heel staying on.

The fills. In the verse every second bar is the guitar's: the singer lands a word on its downbeat, and the guitar fills the rest of the bar and ends in the walk-up into the next chord. Before more of the same chord the bass runs instead of walking, and on a form's last bar it turns the song round. Every fill in the song is one of three:

The cards below take every run in the song one at a time, each with the bar before it and the landing after — a tab a run. Where the song has them, bar by bar, with the walk-ups above:

The verse (G G C G / D7 D7 G G)

The chorus (C C G Em / A7 A7 D7 D7)

the figure   a walk-up   a fill bar   the turnaround

The two cards after the exercise are those bars under the singer, note for note. Learn them there.

The 3rds. The accordion leads the tune and thickens it with parallel 3rds; the mariachi's two trumpets do the same.^{[10] [14] [13]} On the guitar a 3rd is a pair:

• The tune's note is on one string and the diatonic 3rd under it is on the next string down.
• The diatonic 3rd is the note two steps below the tune's note in the key's scale: count down two scale notes, not a fixed number of frets. In G major that makes some 3rds three frets wide (a minor 3rd) and some four (a major 3rd), which is why the two-finger shape comes in two sizes.
• Both are struck as one downstroke.
• The index and middle sit a fret apart, or the middle and ring two frets apart, and the shape moves whole up and down the strings.
• The tune is the upper note.

The eight pairs of the tune box, each on its own two strings, from the lowest up. The tune's note is the upper one, named first:

Every phrase of the tune where the guitar carries it — the intro, the chorus in 3rds, the trio, the ending — has the same shape:

The verse's lines are shaped like the singer's instead: eight pairs over the bar, a landing pair held on the next downbeat, the accordion's answer, and the next line's pickup as two eighths (the verse lesson).

Those eight pairs are every pair the song uses at the nut; the drill after the videos runs them up and down. The solo's pairs are the same shapes a position up, and the trio's have the F naturals in; each is drawn where it is used. The cards go in pairs after the box: the hook's melody alone and then the same hook with its 3rds; the trumpet pickup alone and then with its 3rds.

The intro: the hook. The intro is four bars before the singer, over G, C, D7, G. Each bar is one phrase:

The ending's climb is the intro's first bar turned upward. Learn the intro from memory before anything else in the tune.

The verse. The singer sings four lines over G G C G / D7 D7 G G, call and response: each line over one bar, landing on the next bar's downbeat, and the rest of that bar is the guitar's fill — bars 2, 4, 6 and 8. The second card below is that accompaniment, the card from lesson 3, now with the singer on it. The tune, phrase by phrase:

Learn the tune so you know the song, and play it for an instrumental verse. The solo is over these chords, a position up, on its own riff. The singer's line on the cards is the tune the way a singer phrases it: an octave down, D3 to G4, one note to a syllable — the pickup on beat four of the bar before, the line on the bar, the landing word held — each verse to its own words on the one tune.

The chorus. The tune runs over C C G Em / A7 A7 D7 D7, in four phrases:

Under the singer the guitar plays the oom-pah through the turn: the walk down into the Em, the chromatic walk into the A7 and the D7, the walk-down before the last bar and the turnaround on it.

The turn: the vi and the II7. The chorus is where the polka's secondary dominants and the model's Nashville mood meet.^{[10] [11] [1]} After the IV and home, the chorus goes to Em (the vi) for one bar of shade, then to A7 (the II7, the secondary dominant of the V) for two bars that pull into the D7.

• The Em: the bass notes are the open low E and the B on the A string.
• The A7: the bass notes are the open A and the low E, and the chop carries the C♯ at the B string's 2nd fret, the one note in the song outside G major, so the turn is heard even without the tune.
• The oom-pah does not change under the turn.

The trio: the polka goes to the IV. A polka's strains are followed by a trio in the subdominant, so after the solo the song goes to C for a strain of its own.^{[11] [12]}

• A strain is one of a polka's tunes, eight or sixteen bars long.
• The trio is the strain in another key, usually the subdominant. The name is the old dance's, and has nothing to do with three players.

Its chords are I–IV–V7 in the new key: C C F C / G7 G7 C D7. The F is the one barre in the song (or the small F), and the D7 in the last bar is the V7 of G, which turns the song back for the third verse.

The tune sits in the trio box with its F naturals, in four phrases:

The nine pairs of the trio box, with the F naturals in:

The ending. After the last chorus's tail over the D7 come two bars of G, one phrase each:

The solo. The solo is eight bars over the verse's chords, a position up in the accordion box at the 3rd fret, and it is the psychobilly side of the song rather than the accordion's: one riff under the heel that the whole solo is made of — the root struck three times, the ♭3 into the 3rd, up to a ringing 5th and back — answered in 3rds, moved onto the C, bent, and run home, with a chromatic walk into the D7 and a twang on it. Phrase by phrase:

• The riff is on the low E and A strings under the heel, and the ♭3 is the low E's 6th fret (the A string's 6th on the C): passed through in the riff, bent up a half step in bar 7.
• The chops in this box are the grips' top three strings: x-x-x-4-3-3 for G, x-x-x-5-5-3 for C, x-x-x-5-7-5 for D7.
• The hand moves up to the 2nd fret during the chorus's last chop and comes back to the nut during the trio's last bar.

The seven pairs of the accordion box, for the phrases in 3rds:

Three ways through the song. All sixty-two bars are on one card, in order, the same every time. Take it three ways:

1. Listen first, with the guitar up, until the form is in your ear.
2. Play along with the band and the guitar, a section at a time with the looper, up the ladder 120140156176 bpm.
3. Play it yourself with the guitar part silent and the band and the singer up, so every bar is yours.

Loop the one section that is not clean rather than the whole song.

How to make a song in this style. This lesson is six assignments, each played with the band, and each says exactly what to play. They draw on the five habits a song in this style is made of:

1. The oom-pah never stops: a bass note on every beat, a chop on every "and", even under the tune.
2. Every change gets a walk: the scale walk into the IV, the chromatic walk into the V and home, the walk down onto a root on the low E.
3. After every sung line of the verse comes a fill bar, the walk-down in sixteenths ending in the walk-up; before more of the same chord, the country run or the walk-down; on the form's last bar, the turnaround.
4. An answer in 3rds is a pickup, two or three pairs up or down the box, a held pair and the chop — the tune's, not the accompaniment's.
5. The chorus's lift is the vi for a bar and the II7 pulling into the V7.
6. The words go one syllable to a note on the tune — in the verse eight over the bar, the landing held, a pickup of one or two — and a capo moves the song to where the voice sits.

Every card in the assignments is the song's own bars — the verse and the chorus under the singer, the tune in 3rds, the intro, the solo — with some bars left to you. The assignments say what to do with them.

The terms. The words this course uses, one line each:

• The oom-pah is the bajo sexto's pattern: a bass note on every beat and a chop on every "and".
• The chop is one short upstroke through the top three strings, stopped at once.
• The heel is the side of the picking hand resting on the strings by the bridge, the tab's P.M.
• The "and" is the half-beat between two beats, counted "one-and-two-and".
• A walk-up is the bass climbing into the next chord's root in the last two beats before a change.
• A fill is what the guitar plays in a gap: in the verse the whole bar after a sung line — the walk-down in sixteenths, ending in the walk-up — and elsewhere a run before more of the same chord, the country run or the walk-down.
• Call and response is the verse's shape: the singer's line over one bar, landing on the next downbeat, and the guitar's fill in the rest of that bar.
• The turnaround is the run on a form's last bar that leads back to the top.
• A pair is two notes struck as one downstroke, the tune's note and the 3rd under it, written tune over 3rd: D/B is the D on top with the B under it.
• The pickup is three quick strokes on one pair at the head of a phrase, the trumpets' way in.
• A box is the frets one hand position covers, and the notes of the scale inside it.
• A strain is one of a polka's tunes, eight or sixteen bars long; the trio is the strain in another key.
• A secondary dominant is a chord borrowed to pull into a chord that is not the key's home: here the A7 (the II7) into the D7.
• I, IV, V7, vi, II7 name chords by their place in the key: in G they are G, C, D7, Em and A7; in the trio's C they are C, F, G7.

The song was written the way every part in this app is written (docs/STYLES.md), the course the way the courses are (docs/COURSES.md), and the prose to docs/WRITING.md.

• The tune is written note by note as pairs, in three tables, one per box. The pickups, chops and ending strums use the engine's event language, so the tab draws them and the band plays them like any part.
• The oom-pah under the singer is written note by note from the polka part's own vocabulary, with the walks placed by rule: the scale walk into the IV, the walk down into the vi and the trio's IV, the chromatic walk into the V, the II7 and home; in the verse a fill in every second bar under the singer's held word — the walk-down in sixteenths — ending in the walk-up, and the turnaround on the last; in the chorus the walk-down before the last bar and the turnaround on it. Every card is the song's own bars, the same every time it is opened: before 19 September 2026 the sung sections were the engine's part realized from one seed, and the last lesson's two improvising cards were the engine's too until that evening; now nothing on the page is the engine's invention.
• The singer's line (tune in the data) is the tune's upper voice an octave down, one note to a syllable of each verse's words. Since the evening of 19 September 2026 the verses are sung call and response — a line over one bar, landing on the next downbeat, the guitar's fill in the rest of it, a pickup on beat four — each verse's words placed on the one written tune by their counts. The engine's voice sings it — a tone with no words — on a bus of its own, and the appendix draws it as tab.
• The polka part's "octave under the chop" variant used to put a bass note on the G and B strings at the nut; it became the tuba's walk on the bass strings (B116). The song had that walk under one A7 bar and the walked 3rd under three G and C bars until 2026-09-19, when the owner had the figure keep to the root and the 5th everywhere, since that is what the course teaches.
• The scale run into a change used to be written root, 2nd, 3rd, leading tone, and struck the 3rd twice on every change a 4th up (G, A, B, B into C). It is now the new root's 5th, 6th and 7th, the 7th held (B136). The walked bass 3rd used to be placed under every chord, the D7's at the D string's 4th fret; it is now walked over the G and the C only (B137). The chop is stopped by the picking hand, not the fret hand (B138).
• The data has no DOM in it (js/cactus-guide-data.js), so node tools/dive-check.js cactus --print realizes every card as the page does. Every card was read that way against the research: every pair is a 3rd on adjacent strings or a 6th across one, the pickups sit where the phrases start, the chops fall on the "ands", every walk-up lands its root on the beat, the trio has its F naturals, the ending has its two hits, and the sixty-two bars come in order.
• A test loads the page in a frame and holds all of it, and the course's shape. It was broken on purpose once and seen to fail.

The sound is the app's own recorded guitar and synthesized band. Tempos are the feel's; the record is faster or slower than the card's starting tempo.