Hi there Kitty Cats, Your Guitar Sage here! And today we’re going to learn how to play “Upside Down” by Jack Johnson. I’m looking over here on my computer. I’ve got my chart up that I’ve done to the song and I’m going to be playing the song to start off and we’re going to break it down, chords, rhythm, all that good stuff.
So, we start off with any technique that we’re using here today that you don’t understand, check out yourguitarsage.com. There’s an eBook there. It will teach you how to use capos and how to strum and play chords and all that good stuff, really important stuff, packed into a really small package for you with none of the other stuff that’s going to confuse you, okay, so real basic stuff that will show you. There’s actually some advance stuff in there too, but I promise you’ll learn from it. So, I’m going to play this here and then we’ll go into the Hows and Whys of this song. I’m going to start in the middle of the second verse [Demonstration/Singing].
There we got the basic tune and we’re going to talk about the chords, we’re going to be talking about rhythm and all that good stuff, so here we go. For the intro, the verse, what we called the turn around which is the intro, reintroduced typically after the first chorus. For the intro in the verses, this is going to be our choral or rhythmic—our choral, if you will, count or the chords that we’re going to be using. Only break it down chords, we’re going to be using, for this song, you need to know the D, an E minor, a G, and an A. And during the bridge, you’ll need to play one barre chord which is an F sharp minor.
Now, the capo on this is at the second fret, if you check out Jack playing this anything live, he is a capo kind of guy, he does a lot of barre chords, which is fine and dandy because there’s nothing wrong with that and there’s nothing wrong with that and there’s nothing wrong with using a capo. If you have some kids out there are saying, “Well if you’re not strong enough in barre chord and you’re not cool enough.” Well, I don’t know about you, I’m here to make music and not weight lift on the guitar. For professionals, use capos all the time. Not only does it make it convenient to plat these tunes, it’s makes it to where you can free up a bunch of fingers to do a bunch of other stuff. So the way Jack plays it is probably just the way that he grew up playing either he did have a capo he just likes the sound of it, okay.
Anyhow, for this version, we’re using the capo. You can go on YouTube and see Jack playing it. How he think he uses a capo? So here we go. If we’re using capo, we’ve got a lot open chords here but we do have that one F1#m during the bridge, there’s no way out of that. Okay, we have to learn to play that if you don’t know how to use a barre chord already.
Okay let’s start, the intro in verse chords are D, for two measures, E minor for two measures [Demonstration]. So before you do any of these strumming rhythm, if you don’t know how to do that yet, just count it like this, it’s going to be a lot easier for you in the beginning, when you feel comfortable with the rhythm, we’ll get to that in a minute then you can use that of course, you’re always counting, okay.
Alright, chords is going to go—it’s all split measures, so split measures is when we share two or more chords in a measure. So in this case, we’re counting two beats for each chord that going to go B minor, G, F, and again [Demonstration]—that’s the chords, alright.
The bridge is measured F#m, then B minor, measures at F#m, split bar, G and A, it’s going to go like this [Demonstration] then back to the chords. Okay, so that’s the chords for the whole enchilada here. The rhythmic motif is going to go something like this, a motif is a musical idea, typically one that we repeat a lot, and most songs have that. So this is going to go something like this—if you’re not familiar with strumming, check out my strumming video, however, what we’re going to do on this strumming rhythm, if you’re not really familiar with this type of strumming, I want you to mute the left hand over here like this and I want you to practice this strumming rhythm, it’s going to go like this [Demonstration].
I’ll break that down a little bit more but I’m going to take the verse and slow it down and I’ll stop on one chord so we can just concentrate on the rhythms, so it’s going to go something like this [Demonstration]. Okay so, we’ll slow this down a little bit and stay on one chord [Demonstration].
Now, what I’m doing there in between is I’m choking the strings like chopping them, that’s so I’m going. And so what I’m doing is after those chops, I’m doing a half strung, okay. So, that’s doesn’t take a bit of explaining here so, instead of doing that, I’m taking all the time and talking about rhythmic structures and all that, watch that part of the video over and over again and you’ll get it. Okay, it’s going to take sometime. If you don’t get it, get my eBook on strumming about a bunch of exercise that would really get you geared up for any strumming that’s thrown at you.
Alright, hopefully you get this song now. Hopefully, you’d learned something here today. Check out some of my other videos. We’re having that video everyday and check our Playlist online, YouTube homepage. You’re going to see a Playlist for songs and a Playlist for techniques and that sort of thing. So, if you haven’t already subscribed, check in back. Check out yourguitarsage.com for more techniques and keep practicing kids, over and out.
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