Chords for Bossa Nova Guitar Patterns - 5 Levels You Need To Know

_ _ _ _ _ Bossa Nova grooves [Bm] and Bossa Nova songs
are great to check out.
They're fun to play, [E] and I think if you wanna learn
how to play jazz guitar, you [B] really do need
to have those in your repertoire.
In this video, I'm going to go over five [Db] examples
of grooves that you can [C] learn,
and I'm going to start with something really [G] basic,
and then I'm gonna build it up to something
that's a lot more [D] complicated,
but [Gb] also a lot more impressive.
And I'm also [G] going to use some real songs
to [C] demonstrate this so that you're already starting
to work [Ab] on the repertoire [Bm] where you need these grooves.
My [F] name is Jens Larsen.
Learn jazz, make music.
So of course, to play these grooves, we need some chords.
So here are six [G] chords that's gonna cover
pretty much everything that we need.
Oh, and I need to get the other guitar.
_ _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ [G] _ _ [D] The first one is [Am] a C6-9, _ _ _ _ Dm7, _ _ _ and a G7 with a 13.
[G] _ _ _
And then [Am] we also need a Cmaj7 [C] up here, _ _
and [Dm] a Dm7, _ _ and a [G] G7.
_ _ With these six chords, [B] we can pretty much do everything
that [Bb] we need, and there are a few variations later,
but they're easy to follow.
Now we can get into the grooves,
because in Brazilian music, then I think guitar's
really [B] the king of the style, and [Ab] piano and bass
are just cheap imitations.
This first groove is a simple one bar pattern,
but it's also really important because it's actually
a part of all the other grooves,
so you really wanna have this in your [A] system.
The basic version sounds like this.
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ All the grooves in this video have two layers or more,
as you will see later, and we have a high part
of the groove that's the chords,
and then we have [N] the lower layer, which is the bass layer.
Now to be confused with a bass player,
which is something or someone completely different,
even though [Cm] they kinda play the same thing
as your thumb [Bb] is doing here.
In this video, I'm only using bass [A] lines
that are on the heavy beats, so on one and three,
[Cm] and I'm switching [E] between the root and the fifth
whenever that's possible, so [Am] in this case for the C,
I [C] can play the C on the one, [G] and then the G on the three.
Sometimes I'll have [B] the root on the sixth string,
and then I'll just repeat the root [G] on the three as well,
so I won't change there.
[C] When you're practicing a groove like this,
then you want to be aware of the fact
that it is two [B] things happening at the same time,
so it makes sense to actually start
by just playing, for instance, [Ab] the bass part,
[C] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
and then try and play the chords [A] by themselves, _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ and then try and put those two together,
and _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
if you play this through a song,
then that might sound like this.
_ [E] _
_ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ [Am] _
_ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _
_ _ _ [N] There is a lot of room for variations and interaction
in sambas and bossa novas, so while you do want to know
the basic patterns really well,
then it also really pays off to just listen
to what's going on in the music,
and try to [G] interact with the rest of the band.
The first pattern was [Gb] a one bar pattern,
but actually most of the common patterns
that we use are two bars long,
and here's an example that's incorporating
a part of the first [D] pattern, _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Gm] and if you apply this groove to the A [Bbm] part
of Girlfriend With [F] Panima, then you get something like this.
[A] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ [Bb] _
_ [Dbm] _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ [Dbm] _ _ _ [G] This groove takes a little bit of getting [Eb] used to
because in the second half, I'm [G] anticipating the next chord
by playing already on the four and,
and you want to have that in your system
because [B] this is very common,
and actually it's also something that's [E] happening
in all the [Ab] other examples in this video.
This groove is actually [G] pretty simple
because it's the one and the three as bass lines,
so the lower layer is the same
as it is with [Eb] all the other grooves,
but we're then playing all the [Ab] upbeats.
I really like to use this groove [N] as a sort of variation,
so whatever I'm playing, I can usually go to this one
if I want to have a different type of energy
or a different feel or just a slight variation
in the bridge of a song,
and that's also how I'm going to demonstrate this.
Let's first just check out [A] the basic groove, _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ and [N] this is a great groove to use as a variation,
so for instance, if you're using it in the bridge of a song
like Girl from [Ab] Ipanema.
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _
_ _ [Abm] _ _ _ _ _ _
[Dbm] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Am] _
_ _ _ _ [G] I should probably [C] also talk a little bit about
why [Ab] I'm writing out these pieces in 4-4 and not in 2-4
because if you look at how they're written out,
the original Brazilian music is usually written out in 2-4,
and you do feel these grooves in two,
so we're only sort of feeling the beat
where we're playing the bass on the one and the three,
_ [Abm] but we're using this in jazz,
and in jazz, [F] we are always writing stuff out in 4-4,
and if you look at the sheet music for this,
these songs in [Am] real books,
then they're written out in 4-4,
and actually, we're also feeling jazz
on the one and the three [Ab] mostly,
so we're also kind of feeling halftime,
we just write it differently.
For the rest, it's [A] really the same,
and it's not really something to get [Ab] too excited about,
and I think it's easier to write the [N] rhythms out in a meter
and in a way that you're used to reading
rather than something that seems a little bit alien.
Now we're gonna take a groove
that's a little bit more complicated.
We're gonna take the tempo up a bit
and then play a groove [Abm] that has a lot more energy
and also a lot more [E] syncopation. _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [B] The basic slow version of this groove [Am] sounds like this.
_ _ [E] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
One way to [Eb] understand this groove
is that it is consisting of two phrases
where one is only offbeats
and the other one is only downbeats.
Of course, they're not sort of split in each bar,
so they're sort of spread out across it.
You can also see it as being a variation
on the very first pattern that I went over
because [Cm] the second bar is essentially just that pattern.
In any case, you wanna be [B] really sure
that you can play just the chord part by itself,
also because sometimes in bands,
you will actually hear the guitar player just playing that
and not playing the bass part at all.
Using this groove on a song sounds something like this.
[F] _ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _
_ _ _ _ [Bbm] _ _ _ _
_ [F] _ _ _ _ _ Until now, we've had two [E] layers that we're working with.
We had the bass that's just on the heavy beats,
the one and the three,
and then we have the chords
that are a syncopated pattern [Abm] on top of that.
But actually, you can add another layer to that
because we can also split the chord up
and then give that a high and a low part.
[Gm] And the way that this is done is really typical
for the fact [Eb] that this is guitar music
because it's just [C] really being easy
in terms of finding an easy [G] way
of adding two levels on the guitar.
And the way you do that
is just by [Am] using different string sets.
So the groove is going to split
between having _ [A] this middle set as [D] the chord
and then a higher set as well.
And [G] that way, we get two layers.
The basic groove sounds [E] like this. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
And the groove is using the high notes as a sort of accents.
And it's just adding sort of an [N] extra dimension
to what we're playing,
and we can add a little bit more life and variation
and make it more interesting in that way.
The song I'm demonstrating this [B] on
is Cole Porter's Night and Day,
which is, of course, just a jazz [Em] standard,
but it works really well as a samba.
So [G] that's also how it's often played.
[Ab] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ _ _ [Ab] _ _ [G] _ _ _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ The fun part of learning chords
is [E] not really learning the chords themselves.
[D] It's all the different [Bm] things that you can do with them.
And especially, as you [A] can tell from this video,
it's really about [Bb] sort of playing some [Gm] interesting rhythms
and some [Eb] interesting grooves.
If you wanna [D] check out another video that I did
where I'm taking a really basic [Dbm] voicing,
but then [F] giving you five examples of different things
that you [G] can play with that,
some different grooves and some different rhythms,
then check out this [Em] video
where I'm covering some shell voicings
and applying [F] that to five different [N] standards.