Chords for Both Sides Now - Guitar Lesson Preview

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[N] Now, this is a tune that there are lots of ways to play.
There's only a couple of chords involved,
but after painstakingly listening to this
about a thousand times,
I think I've got it dialed down to what Joanie really did.
And so we're gonna talk about in this lesson.
Now this tune, she wrote it in 1967
_ and Judy Collins recorded it on her first album,
not her first album, sorry.
She had plenty of albums by then, big star.
But on her 67 album, Wildflowers.
And then Joanie finally put it on her own album in 1969,
Clouds, and that's the version
that we're gonna be talking more about.
Now, Joanie has rearranged this many times over the years
and a lot of different performances of it
are quite different.
So this is based pretty much on the studio version,
which was on capo to the fourth fret
and some of the live versions from the time
where she was pretty consistent.
At first when I was listening to this,
I thought, man, it's just random, whatever she's doing,
but it's not.
So I've got it broken down into just really a chart
with slash notation that shows you where to play
when you get to each chord.
So a little slightly different approach to this
than that even, and the chord names,
we're not even gonna worry about them.
We will have a little theory segment
on name that chord just for fun,
but very simple chords.
And the tricky thing about it
is just getting the chord changes on,
accented on the right beats of the measure.
So it's done in an open D tuning.
Now that would be, if I weren't capoed,
that would be D, so the sixth string down to D,
fifth string stays at A and the fourth string stays at D,
third string goes down a half step to F sharp,
second string goes down a whole step to A
and the first string goes down a whole step to D. _
[F#] So now I'm in a relative open D tuning,
but we're always gonna talk about this,
whether we have the capo or not,
we're gonna think about the names of the notes
as this being D, even though it's really F sharp, right?
So we're really playing this in the key of F sharp.
And if we [G] capo it to the fifth,
we'd be in the key of [C#] G,
[N] all relative, all unimportant for most things.
Only even three chord shapes in this song,
and really only three basic chords
with a couple of variations on them.
[F#] So fairly simple, but [D] getting all the chord changes
in the right place is the big challenge with this song
and making it sound [F#] like what she did.
So _ there were all the chord [C] shapes,
but I'll break that down.
We'll get in here a little [A#] closer and take a look at [N] those.
And then we'll talk about the strumming
and take a look at the chart.
And again, have a name that chord episode.
So hoping to have a lot of fun with this one,
and I hope you do too.
But today we're looking at Joni Mitchell's,
Both Sides Now. _ _
Well, that was part of the lesson I put together
on Joni Mitchell's tune, obviously, Both Sides [F#] Now.
And it's a song that was quite a [G#] challenge to work out
as accurately and specifically as I wanted,
and almost gave up on it a bunch of times.
[F#] But really feel like I dialed it in
and got [N] exactly where all of her chord changes happen,
especially according to the older versions.
So if you'd like to check it out,
it's part of the Target program at Totally Guitars,
which is a monthly subscription program.
Also, though, available as an individual purchase
and maybe part of a Joni Mitchell pack
that we hope to have coming soon, if it's not already there.
There are a lot of free lessons as well.
They're a little bit, actually,
[C#] a lot less complicated than this.
[N] But this one's fairly easy as far as the strumming goes.
It's just a matter of getting the chords,
and the chord shapes are all really easy.
Just a matter of getting the accents
where they need to be.
So the free lessons, there's like 60 of them.
They're a great way to get started if you're a beginner.
There's even a whole free beginner's course.
And then there are over 500 songs in the Target program now.
Something there I'm sure that would appeal
to most guitar players.
So come visit us when you can at Totally Guitars,
especially if you want to see the rest
of the complete lesson on both sides now. _ _ _ _ _