Chords for Mandolin Lesson: Walkin' Boss- Jerry Garcia and David Grisman

Hey everyone, my name is Brian Brown, welcome back to my YouTube channel.
This summer I gave a couple mandolin lessons and I figured why not share some of the little
tunes I worked on in some videos.
_ So if you watch my videos but you're not a mandolin student, _ sorry I'll have more fun
stuff for you soon.
But anyway, yeah, this is going to be about Walkin' Boss, a tune done by Grissman and Garcia.
And I'm going to actually try a new thing where I use some kind of Megashare or something
_ _ to upload the sheet music I have for it so you can download it.
And if the link gets old after a while and you want to get it from me, just maybe comment
or message me and I'll find a way to get it to you again.
And since the video on my laptop is terrible today for some reason, maybe it's the lighting
in here, _ I took the videos of my fingers with my iPhone.
So the main thing we're going to be working on is the two parts of the intro.
The first part is where Jerry Garcia and David Grissman are playing mandolin and guitar,
basically unison melody. _
And then they sort of break into this counter rhythm thing.
And then the second part that I think of is when the guitar starts doing more chord-y
stuff and _ again you have a counter rhythm kind of call and response with mandolin.
And we'll be looking at the mandolin half of it.
_ _ So first let's hear the first half up to tempo to see what we're talking about.
Roll the clip.
[Bm] _ _ _ _
[G] _ [B] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [G] _ [Dm] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [C] _ [Dm] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ Now notice that all the licks in that tune are going to use the notes of the C major
scale, _ [Gm] _ _ _ etc.
[Ab] _ And when it's on the D minor chord part of it, it's using a specific group of notes within
that scale that we might call the D minor pentatonic.
So [Dm] that's where you get. _
_ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ [Dm] _
_ [G] _ _ [Gb] _ All right, now let's look at that [A] part slow.
_ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ [C] _ [Bb] _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ _ [Bm] _ _
[Cm] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
[Dm] _ _ _ [Cm] _ [Bm] _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ [A] _ [G] _ [Cm] _ [Ab] _ [Dm] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[G] _ [Cm] _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
[B] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ _ [Dm] _ _
[A] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ And so that's the first half.
And remember to play it slowly until you can do it slow and steady before you try to do
it fast and crazy.
It's always better to have it even before moving to a faster speed.
All right, so let's hear part two up to tempo.
_ _ [Fm] _ _ _ [D] _ _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
[Dm] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ [F] _
[D] _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ So keep in mind the notes you're using are still going to all be in the C major scale
except for that G sharp, which is a [A] little _
[Dm] _ passing [Gb] tone between G and A.
But besides that, all C major notes.
So no sharps or flats.
And one measure I'll point out before we play it slow is a couple measures before the end
you have this thing [Am] that sounds like.
_ _ _ _ _ [Cm] And so the first part of that, I wrote it as like 30 second notes.
Basically, it's [E] like a hammer.
So you pick once, but you're going to roll from E, second fret on the D string, [F] up to
F, _ [E] back down to E, [D] and open D.
_ [Ab] [C] And then you're going to hit C.
So _ _ _ you've got to be able to do that.
And it's kind of hard to [F] practice slower because that's _ kind of weird.
But yeah, and then it's kind of syncopated after that.
[Am] _
_ _ _ [G] So it's a weird measure to look out for.
Let's [Fm] hear it slow.
_ _ _ _ [E] _ [D] _
_ [C] _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _ [B] _
[C] _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ [Gm] _
[Am] _ _ [B] _ [Cm] _ _ _ _ [N] _
_ _ [C] _ [D] _ _ [Em] _ [Bbm] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
[Am] _ _ [Ab] _ [Bb] _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ _ [G] _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ _ _ _ [Em] _ _ _
_ _ _ [C] _ [D] _ [Am] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ [Gm] _
_ [C] _ _ _ _ _ [Dm] _ _
_ _ _ [Eb] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
And _ as far as the rest of the song goes, I'll just show you real quick.
_ _ [N] _ _
Basically Grissman likes his high bar chords and everything.
So he doesn't go for like a full D minor down here.
Like when he's accompanying Jerry Garcia's guitar, he'll play his D minor chord like
way up here as this minor bar chord.
Seventh fret, seventh fret, eighth fret, tenth fret.
_ You know, way up here.
[D] _ _ That kind of thing.
So he'll do that.
He'll go back to the little licks.
Walking low.
_ That kind of thing.
And for a lot of it, the chords is just one D minor, one D minor, and then three C's back
to D minor kind of thing.
Sometimes it varies a little.
The only other chord in the song is [Db] every now and then he'll use an A7 somewhere to
[Dm] get [N] _ back to D minor.
_ That's pretty much it for the song.
You just kind of use those phrases and modify them using D minor and C major. _ _