Rob Schumann: The subject of this tutorial is Bossa Nova rhythms and if you are a rhythm guitar player you should be able to play a lot of different styles. A lot of people, when they first pick up an acoustic guitar, they learn to strum, they learn to play their basic chords, but sometimes maybe you are sitting in with a band or playing a wedding reception or something and somebody calls a jazz standard or something Bossa Nova or samba style and you are just lost as far as rhythms are concerned. So this is going to give you an introduction into that style.
Bossa Nova is a style that comes from Brazil and it's based on sort of a rhythm that centers around the first beat of the measure. A lot of times in rock music we are used to things really centered two and four, but Bossa Nova rhythm really focuses on one. This is a style that came about in late 50's early 60's. It was really huge for about six years but it has worked its way into some jazz standards that you have probably heard. So the underlying rhythms many people believe comes from Clave style, which is based on African drumming patterns.
So it's a style of music that has a lot of different origins and it goes back quite a ways. So let's start out by just looking at some typical jazz chords that we would need to know to play this kind of style and then we will actually look at the right hand pattern. You will notice that I am playing on a nylon string, which would be pretty typical for this style. However, you could feel free to play it on a steel string and in lot of cases, if it's just a song that somebody calls out you play whatever you have handy, but generally it would be played on a nylon string.
So we are going to play this over some jazz changes and so I just want to walk through these chords. Now notice nylon string guitars don't have fret marking so I will try to do my best to outline where my fingers are as we go through these. The first chord that we are looking at is a D Minor 9 chord. You can really just think of this as an extension of a D Minor 7, which is probably a chord that a lot of people have played, couple of different ways to play that. We are playing in more of a jazz style, here is a very typical chord voicing and so a D Minor 9 is sort of used in place of a D Minor 7. You may even see on a chart, D Minor 7 and you can use this chord in place of it.
So we have got the second finger on the fifth fret of the fifth string. Then I am using the first finger on the third fret of the fourth string. Third finger on the fifth fret of third string and fourth finger on the fifth fret of the second string. We are just playing those middle four strings. So that gives us a D Minor 9. The next chord that we will look at, and you can see all these grids and the tab at the beginning of the video, is a G 13. Now this is sort of a substitute chord for a G 7. You can think of it as a G dominant. So it's sort of in the dominant family of chords. So this is a chord that can be used in place of a G 7.
So in this case we have got the first finger on the third fret of the sixth string, second finger on the third fret of the fourth string, third finger on the fourth fret of the third string and fourth finger on the fifth fret of the second string. So I am playing the sixth string, four, three and two. So that gives me my G 13. Next is a C 6, 9 chord that looks like this and this is a chord that can be used in place of a Major 7 chord.
There are a couple of different ways that people know those. So in this case I have got the second finger on the third fret of the fifth string, the first finger on the second fret of the fourth and third string and then the third finger on the third fret of the second string, hitting those middle four strings again. This is something that's known as a 2-5-1 in jazz and you can hear with these chord voicings we have just looked at. It sounds a lot more convincing to use these voicings and these extensions.
If we just play that as D Minor 7 to G 7 to C Major 7, you get the idea of the tonality. But when we use these voicings, you can hear how with the voice leading there that just flows together much more. The next chord that we will look at is an F Major 9 chord and this would be once again an extension of a Major 7, so this would be another thing that we could do to a Major 7 chord in addition to that C 6, 9.
In this case, I am going to go all the way up to the eighth fret. My second finger will go on the eighth fret fifth string. First finger is on the seventh fret fourth string, third finger is eighth fret second string and fourth finger on the ninth fret third string, kind of complicated when you first learn it; once your hand gets used to just going down in that sequence, I usually go two, one, three, four until you just learn to put them all down at once, you will get used to that.
So as far as that being called a 2-5-1, let's slow down for a second and look at that. Basically, the second chord in a harmonized Major scale is a Minor 7 so we are thinking this as 2, so in this case it would be like in the key of C. So D Minor or D Minor 9 would be my two chords. This G would be the five chord, G is five notes pass C and C would be the one chord. So that's why that's referred to as a 2-5-1. Then this F could be thought of as the four chord of that key. So four chords are a Major and so we have got this Major 7. So we have got that fingering; we are plucking the middle for that.
Now we are going to do something called a Minor 2-5-1. This revolves around doing it in the Minor key. So the first chord that we are going to start with is a B Minor 7 Flat 5. So I will give you the fingering for that. We are going to use the second finger on the sixth string seventh fret, the third finger on the fourth string seventh fret, fourth finger on the seventh fret third string and then first finger comes back here to the sixth fret on the second string. Plucking the sixth, fourth, third and second string, so that's a B Minor 7 Flat 5. We could think of that as like the seventh chord of the harmonized Major scale.
Now we are going to go to an E7#9 chord and this belongs to the family of altered dominant chords. So on a Minor 2-5-1, your 5 chord is going to be altered and that will lot of times have either #9, Flat 9, #5, Flat 5 kind of alternation to it. So in this case this chord will look like this. I am going to take the second finger on the seventh fret of the fifth string, first finger goes to the sixth fret of the fourth string, third finger is going to get to the seventh fret of the third string and fourth finger is on the eighth fret of the second string. You can hear how that has a very tension-filled sound. So that's sort of indicative of an altered dominant sound.
Next, we are going to add something to that or change it to -- this would be notice a tritone substitution and this just a way of throwing in an extra chord to keep things interesting. So it's sort of an extension of this bar where we are using this E7#9. We are substituting in a tritone sub and this is going to be A 13 chord. We already have that G 13. So this will actually be the same voicing. We are just going to take it up to the sixth fret. So first finger and second finger are on the sixth fret of the sixth and fourth strings. Third finger is on the seventh fret of the third string and fourth finger is on the eighth fret of the second string. So this is going to be my B Flat 13. To end I am going to end on a Minor chord and this will be sort of an extension of a Minor chord. So we are going to play a Minor 11.
So this will be an A minor 11. So this is something we could play in place of just a regular Minor 7 chord. So I have got the second, third and fourth fingers here on the fifth fret. I am on the sixth, fourth and third string. So it's a lot like that Minor 7 Flat 5, except we are going to back the first finger up one more fret. So that will be on the third fret of the second string.
So that's an A Minor 11. In order to do a repeat, to really want us to go back to that first Minor chord that we were on, we are going to throw in another altered dominant chord. In this case, it's going to be
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services