This 80's inspired track is a beautiful meld of John Mayer's mastery of various genres. The track consists of a 4 chord loop, some funky picking parts and chord grooves, escalating to a really tasteful and beautifully played guitar solo. This track has everything, and in this guitar lesson Dan breaks it all down for you!
During the verse, intro and chorus we are essentially using 5 chords. You can play these chords in a variety of ways, but we like to think John mayer would play them as follows:
The main looped progression is the first 4 chords, which you play for one bar each: Am7 /// D7 /// Gmaj7 /// Cmaj7 ///. As for the B major, you use that in place of the Cmaj7 on the bar before the chorus starts. You'll hear the change, as it is a little drastic sounding!
As we move into the breakdwon, which is only played through once, John is using the G major pentatonic scale to play a funky picking part (08:00 in the video) as well as two chords for the funky strumming. These are best illustrated via a scale diagram as shown below:
As for the actual 16th note strumming pattern we are using on the funky chords, you can play it as follows. Remember that the notes pictured in red below are the main hits (first two notes on the D5 funky chords, the other tow on the G). You should also try to add the extra ghost notes by continuously strumming the 16th notes with 'dead' strings.
The guitar solo is played over the 4 chords of the verse, and we are therefore using the G major scale and G major pentatonic scale. Skip forward to 12:50 int he video for the solo! The scales we are using are shown here:
Ready to move on? Remember to check out every lesson in this unit first – then try the next unit...
This song is a real masterpiece from his album Continuum. The song, for the most part, just features two chords and some beautiful guitar parts. As we hit the chorus, we look at the intricate chord shapes and the theory behind the changes. Thomas walks you through every aspect of this song in two videos, so get ready to learn!