Chords for Music lesson: how to find your own way as Richie Havens did
Tempo:
92.65 bpm
Chords used:
D
G
E
A
B
Tuning:Standard Tuning (EADGBE)Capo:+0fret
Start Jamming...
Hi, my name is Aaron Wolfe, and I've been a guitar teacher for many years
and one concern that I have when I have new students come to me is
I don't really want to just make everybody do the same traditional classical thing because
The truth is the world doesn't need a lot more guitarists
it's very fun and enjoyable to play music on your own for your own sake and
Everybody can benefit from learning all sorts of musical things
But I like to use a story that I learned of one of the guitarists
I like a lot whose name is Richie Havens.
He passed away recently, but he's famous for playing at Woodstock
But other things he's a famous singer-songwriter
And he didn't have a teacher like me when he was first learning to play the guitar
What he did was he had a guitar and he was listening to a lot of music and he played the instrument
Didn't really like how that sounded and know how to make good music with this
[E] I just play this all day
[Gb] Doesn't really sound like much so he experimented with the tuning and he kind of just [A] adjusted thing
Until it sounded [D] good
experimentation he found
[B] What most people would call an open [D] tuning where he has this certain chord?
And he didn't know what to call it later on [E] somebody came along and said oh you're playing a D chord
But that wasn't important the important thing was that he just found it by [D] experimenting
Because he persisted and he didn't know really how to play either so what he did was he just struck the guitar like this
And then he just sort of used his [Ab] thumb to push down on the strings [D] to change to different chords
[G] [D] [A] [G]
[F] [N] And that's it.
That's actually very similar to how a lot of old blues guitarists used to play with a slide
This is just a heavy piece of glass and you could use anything
That's glass or metal or anything that's just heavy enough to stop the strings vibrating at a certain spot
Then you just touch this to the strings
And you can get all sorts of stuff and people evolved this into
Lap steel [B] style playing and all sorts of country things and blues styles where you do something like [D] this
[Ebm]
[D]
[G] [D] [N] Now in Richie Havens case somebody came along and said you're an idiot you don't know how to play the guitar
That's not how you do it with it on your lap like that you sit up like this
And you have to have it in this certain classical position
And so Richie Havens didn't know better and said okay
And so he put the guitar up like this and then he kept putting his thumb around here like this
So he [G] kept playing this way anyway
And then he kept playing that way for
Well [N] the rest of his life
And he made all sorts of interesting songs
And he never learned how to play any of the types of things anybody else was doing
So instead of playing the Beatles the same way that George Harrison would play it
He had to figure out some way of making it sound
Kind of like the Beatles that his way and he basically failed
He didn't get it to sound like the Beatles, but what he got was his own interesting sound that's musical and enjoyable
and it would have been kind of a shame if he had had some teacher who just made him sound like everybody else because
He might not have ever even done as creative things as he did
So you think it's very important that students learn to explore and try things
And there's a certain attitude that Richie Havens had whether he learned it somewhere
It's just part of his personality
he was the sort of person who kept going and explored things and experimented until he found something that was
Artistic or meaningful to him and that's really a big key of this
it's just about persistence and it's about trying things and experimenting and
Even if you do learn traditional things
Which I've done you can learn a lot by breaking out of the box and not necessarily doing things just because they're the standard way
So I encourage everybody to just explore and you can do all sorts of different things play the instrument as you like snap on the strings
You can bang on it like a drum and you can easily find just about everything out
There has been explored by creative people
But there's also something involved in being creative and figuring it out for yourself.
So go and explore and have fun
[D]
and one concern that I have when I have new students come to me is
I don't really want to just make everybody do the same traditional classical thing because
The truth is the world doesn't need a lot more guitarists
it's very fun and enjoyable to play music on your own for your own sake and
Everybody can benefit from learning all sorts of musical things
But I like to use a story that I learned of one of the guitarists
I like a lot whose name is Richie Havens.
He passed away recently, but he's famous for playing at Woodstock
But other things he's a famous singer-songwriter
And he didn't have a teacher like me when he was first learning to play the guitar
What he did was he had a guitar and he was listening to a lot of music and he played the instrument
Didn't really like how that sounded and know how to make good music with this
[E] I just play this all day
[Gb] Doesn't really sound like much so he experimented with the tuning and he kind of just [A] adjusted thing
Until it sounded [D] good
experimentation he found
[B] What most people would call an open [D] tuning where he has this certain chord?
And he didn't know what to call it later on [E] somebody came along and said oh you're playing a D chord
But that wasn't important the important thing was that he just found it by [D] experimenting
Because he persisted and he didn't know really how to play either so what he did was he just struck the guitar like this
And then he just sort of used his [Ab] thumb to push down on the strings [D] to change to different chords
[G] [D] [A] [G]
[F] [N] And that's it.
That's actually very similar to how a lot of old blues guitarists used to play with a slide
This is just a heavy piece of glass and you could use anything
That's glass or metal or anything that's just heavy enough to stop the strings vibrating at a certain spot
Then you just touch this to the strings
And you can get all sorts of stuff and people evolved this into
Lap steel [B] style playing and all sorts of country things and blues styles where you do something like [D] this
[Ebm]
[D]
[G] [D] [N] Now in Richie Havens case somebody came along and said you're an idiot you don't know how to play the guitar
That's not how you do it with it on your lap like that you sit up like this
And you have to have it in this certain classical position
And so Richie Havens didn't know better and said okay
And so he put the guitar up like this and then he kept putting his thumb around here like this
So he [G] kept playing this way anyway
And then he kept playing that way for
Well [N] the rest of his life
And he made all sorts of interesting songs
And he never learned how to play any of the types of things anybody else was doing
So instead of playing the Beatles the same way that George Harrison would play it
He had to figure out some way of making it sound
Kind of like the Beatles that his way and he basically failed
He didn't get it to sound like the Beatles, but what he got was his own interesting sound that's musical and enjoyable
and it would have been kind of a shame if he had had some teacher who just made him sound like everybody else because
He might not have ever even done as creative things as he did
So you think it's very important that students learn to explore and try things
And there's a certain attitude that Richie Havens had whether he learned it somewhere
It's just part of his personality
he was the sort of person who kept going and explored things and experimented until he found something that was
Artistic or meaningful to him and that's really a big key of this
it's just about persistence and it's about trying things and experimenting and
Even if you do learn traditional things
Which I've done you can learn a lot by breaking out of the box and not necessarily doing things just because they're the standard way
So I encourage everybody to just explore and you can do all sorts of different things play the instrument as you like snap on the strings
You can bang on it like a drum and you can easily find just about everything out
There has been explored by creative people
But there's also something involved in being creative and figuring it out for yourself.
So go and explore and have fun
[D]
Key:
D
G
E
A
B
D
G
E
Hi, my name is Aaron Wolfe, and I've been a guitar teacher for many years
and one concern that I have when I have new students come to me is
I don't really want to just make everybody do the same traditional classical thing because
The truth is the world doesn't need a lot more guitarists
it's very fun and enjoyable to play music on your own for your own sake and
Everybody can benefit from learning all sorts of musical things _
But I like to use a story that I learned of one of the guitarists
I like a lot whose name is Richie Havens.
He passed away recently, but he's famous for playing at Woodstock
But other things he's a famous singer-songwriter
And he didn't have a teacher like me when he was first learning to play the guitar
What he did was he had a guitar and he was listening to a lot of music and he played the instrument
Didn't really like how that sounded and know how to make good music with this
[E] I just play this all day
_ _ _ [Gb] Doesn't really sound like much so he experimented with the tuning and he kind of just [A] adjusted thing _
Until it sounded [D] good _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ experimentation he found _ _ _
[B] What most people would call an open [D] tuning where he has this certain chord?
And he didn't know what to call it later on [E] somebody came along and said oh you're playing a D chord
But that wasn't important the important thing was that he just found it by [D] experimenting
_ Because he persisted and he didn't know really how to play either so what he did was he just struck the guitar like this
And then he just sort of used his [Ab] thumb to push down on the strings [D] to change to different chords _
[G] _ _ [D] _ _ [A] _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ [F] _ _ _ [N] And that's it.
That's actually very similar to how a lot of old blues guitarists used to play with a slide
This is just a heavy piece of glass and you could use anything
That's glass or metal or anything that's just heavy enough to stop the strings vibrating at a certain spot
Then you just touch this to the strings
And you can get all sorts of stuff and people evolved this into
Lap steel [B] style playing and all sorts of country things and blues styles where you do something like [D] this
_ _ _ _ [Ebm] _
_ [D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ [D] _ [N] Now in Richie Havens case somebody came along and said you're an idiot you don't know how to play the guitar
That's not how you do it with it on your lap like that you sit up like this
And you have to have it in this certain classical position
And so Richie Havens didn't know better and said okay
And so he put the guitar up like this and then he kept putting his thumb around here like this
So he [G] kept playing this way anyway
And then he kept playing that way for
Well [N] the rest of his life
And he made all sorts of interesting songs
And he never learned how to play any of the types of things anybody else was doing
So instead of playing the Beatles the same way that George Harrison would play it
He had to figure out some way of making it sound
Kind of like the Beatles that his way and he basically failed
He didn't get it to sound like the Beatles, but what he got was his own interesting sound that's musical and enjoyable
and it would have been kind of a shame if he had had some teacher who just made him sound like everybody else because
He might not have ever even done as creative things as he did
So you think it's very important that students learn to explore and try things
And there's a certain attitude that Richie Havens had whether he learned it somewhere
It's just part of his personality
he was the sort of person who kept going and explored things and experimented until he found something that was
Artistic or meaningful to him and that's really a big key of this
it's just about persistence and it's about trying things and experimenting and
Even if you do learn traditional things
Which I've done you can learn a lot by breaking out of the box and not necessarily doing things just because they're the standard way
So I encourage everybody to just explore and you can do all sorts of different things play the instrument as you like snap on the strings
You can bang on it like a drum and you can easily find just about everything out
There has been explored by creative people
But there's also something involved in being creative and figuring it out for yourself.
So go and explore and have fun
[D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
and one concern that I have when I have new students come to me is
I don't really want to just make everybody do the same traditional classical thing because
The truth is the world doesn't need a lot more guitarists
it's very fun and enjoyable to play music on your own for your own sake and
Everybody can benefit from learning all sorts of musical things _
But I like to use a story that I learned of one of the guitarists
I like a lot whose name is Richie Havens.
He passed away recently, but he's famous for playing at Woodstock
But other things he's a famous singer-songwriter
And he didn't have a teacher like me when he was first learning to play the guitar
What he did was he had a guitar and he was listening to a lot of music and he played the instrument
Didn't really like how that sounded and know how to make good music with this
[E] I just play this all day
_ _ _ [Gb] Doesn't really sound like much so he experimented with the tuning and he kind of just [A] adjusted thing _
Until it sounded [D] good _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ experimentation he found _ _ _
[B] What most people would call an open [D] tuning where he has this certain chord?
And he didn't know what to call it later on [E] somebody came along and said oh you're playing a D chord
But that wasn't important the important thing was that he just found it by [D] experimenting
_ Because he persisted and he didn't know really how to play either so what he did was he just struck the guitar like this
And then he just sort of used his [Ab] thumb to push down on the strings [D] to change to different chords _
[G] _ _ [D] _ _ [A] _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ [F] _ _ _ [N] And that's it.
That's actually very similar to how a lot of old blues guitarists used to play with a slide
This is just a heavy piece of glass and you could use anything
That's glass or metal or anything that's just heavy enough to stop the strings vibrating at a certain spot
Then you just touch this to the strings
And you can get all sorts of stuff and people evolved this into
Lap steel [B] style playing and all sorts of country things and blues styles where you do something like [D] this
_ _ _ _ [Ebm] _
_ [D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ [D] _ [N] Now in Richie Havens case somebody came along and said you're an idiot you don't know how to play the guitar
That's not how you do it with it on your lap like that you sit up like this
And you have to have it in this certain classical position
And so Richie Havens didn't know better and said okay
And so he put the guitar up like this and then he kept putting his thumb around here like this
So he [G] kept playing this way anyway
And then he kept playing that way for
Well [N] the rest of his life
And he made all sorts of interesting songs
And he never learned how to play any of the types of things anybody else was doing
So instead of playing the Beatles the same way that George Harrison would play it
He had to figure out some way of making it sound
Kind of like the Beatles that his way and he basically failed
He didn't get it to sound like the Beatles, but what he got was his own interesting sound that's musical and enjoyable
and it would have been kind of a shame if he had had some teacher who just made him sound like everybody else because
He might not have ever even done as creative things as he did
So you think it's very important that students learn to explore and try things
And there's a certain attitude that Richie Havens had whether he learned it somewhere
It's just part of his personality
he was the sort of person who kept going and explored things and experimented until he found something that was
Artistic or meaningful to him and that's really a big key of this
it's just about persistence and it's about trying things and experimenting and
Even if you do learn traditional things
Which I've done you can learn a lot by breaking out of the box and not necessarily doing things just because they're the standard way
So I encourage everybody to just explore and you can do all sorts of different things play the instrument as you like snap on the strings
You can bang on it like a drum and you can easily find just about everything out
There has been explored by creative people
But there's also something involved in being creative and figuring it out for yourself.
So go and explore and have fun
[D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _