How to Play Waiting on the World to Change

Hey guys! What’s up? It’s Aaron. The song I want to teach you today is John Mayer, it’s called “Waiting on the World to Change.” So, using my Paul again, I’m going to cut my head off. Hope you guys don’t mind. This song right here, my guitar is in standard tuning. It’s fairly—I believe it’s a fairly easy song to play. So I’m going to go ahead and kind of you guys a basics. The way that I’m going to pick it, I’m going to start off with—I will let you listen to it real quick. [Demonstration] All right, so start out with a little barré. You are only going to have your finger is picking this song, so you really don’t need to really cover a couple of strings. But I’m going to just teach you way to hold muscle, it’s not a big deal. All right, take your pointer finger. Just stick it up to your 10th fret of your E-string. Then you’re going to take your ring and pinky and put them on the 12th fret, that where the two dots are over here, 12th fret on the second third string is definitely in the top. So in this string, what I’m moving and this string here on 12th fret. So that your D and G—your A and your D, I’m sorry. Middle finger is in your G string which is one, two, three, four from the top and it’s on the 11th fret. Now, pinky pattern that I use is just how I pick the top string with my thumb. The D string, the third string down of my pointer, the four-string down to my middle. The second string that A-string I’ll pick it. The reason I don’t pick it is no big deal but I would I still want to keep that ring finger there because when you slide down, you’re going to play here a little bit. All right, so the first one is pointer finger, 10th fret on the low E-string top string. Next string down, you have your ring finger on the 12th fret of the third string down pinky 12th fret, four-string down. You want to put your middle finger down the 11th fret. So you’re going to pick with your thumb in the top, the low E-string and you’re going to pick your D and G-string. So it sounds like this. I want to play it. Again, I pick them all together or just pick the base note then pick the ones below. That’s what it sounds like that. So from that, you’re going to go slide down. You’re pointer finger is going to slide down to the 7th fret with low E and you’re just going to keep that same finger position. You’re going to slide down. Only thing that’s going to be different is you’re going to take your middle finger off. So you’re going to be playing essentially [Demonstration]. First one you’re going to play like I said, it’s just the thumb and your D, and your G string. So your first on the top and then your third and fourth down. And you slide down, you’re going to play the top three strings. All right, so like that. With top one, I said you can play thumb and then the A and D together or all three together. Let me slide down here, you can do the same thing go or you can go, or you can do even [Demonstration]. Then whenever you slide down, [Demonstration] that’s your first one, slide down to the 7th fret point like I said and you’ll play top three. Then I'm sliding that same bar formation. So if you notice when this first one [Demonstration], these first three here [Demonstration], our fingers aren’t doing—not moving anywhere, they’re just sliding up and down, keeping the same position. So that first step we do in 12th fret with ring and pinky, pointer finger on the 10th fret and your middle finger again on 11th fret of your G string. Sorry, if I keep repeating this but I want to make sure we get it right. It’s those three. [Demonstration] If you want to bar that, instead of just playing the top three, you can actually play the same strings you played in 12th fret. You’re just going to make sure you bar all the way across on that. Then slide your bar down to the 3rd fret and make that major chord by putting your middle finger down and you’re going to play the same three strings, your low E, your D string and your G. It’s going to go [Demonstration]. Then, you’re going to switch your fingers little bit slide up bar across on the 5th fret. You’re going to bar across all five strings and then you’re going to play the A string which is your second string down as that pointer finger fifth fret. Stick your ring and pinky on the D and G strings, on the 7th fret and you can play those three strings there. So you’re playing your A, D, and G. Okay, so that’s your fourth chord, so the first one is here. [Demonstration] All right fifth-chord, you’re still in the 5th fret. Instead of barring the bar of five, you’re not barring the six and you go right back to that position you used for the first three chords, all right and you play the same picking strings. You play your low E with your thumb, your D with your pointer, and your G with your middle. All right, so you play that with your fifth chord. Your sixth chord is the same as your second chord. So you’ll this, this is first. [Demonstration] The seventh chord, it is just like your third chord, so back to your 3rd fret bar. And then your eight, it’s just like your fourth. That bar across the 5th fret with that little ring and pinky on the 7th fret. Put that together [Demonstration] Well, I like to play this. [Demonstration] And I’m just playing like some of the base and then mixing them with the base note, sometimes and then sometimes just made all three of them together. All right, the solo, I want to cover the solo really quick. The solo starts out. You can hear kind of a note comes in from silent. All he does is he plays a ring finger or whatever finger on the 7th fret of your B string. And he muted out his volume knob, brings it in. All right, then you’re going to hear this and just go start at the very bottom—I use my ring finger. Play the note, slide all the way to 7th fret, then you’re going to put your pointer finger on the 5th fret. This is all in the B string, every note on the B string all solo the way I teach it. So zero to seven, then five, hammer on seven, play seven again, slide up to 10. So five, hammer on seven, seven, up to 10, then seven, hammer on 10, slide to 12, 10, hammer on 12, slide to 15, 10, hammer on 15, slide to 17, and then slide the 19. Then put your pointer finger down here on 15. Put that together, it sounds like this. So you’re coming with the fade in [Demonstration]. And that last part, take your pointer finger on the high E string, I guess you did it in the high. High E string pointer finger, 14th fret and you’re going to play the high E string. You’re going to play once you hammer on to the 15th fret, so here 14 to 15 hammer on. So I’m picking ones, so you pick, now picking, hammer on the 15th fret. You do that, one, two, three times [Demonstration]. And put a 15th fret with your middle finger there on the B string, so [Demonstration]. All right, the second part of the solo. He starts on the 10th fret of the B string pointer finger and he plays the 10th, hammer on the 12th then plays again to slide up the 15th, then he switches back end or quick and goes, 10, hammer on 12, seven. So it goes, 10, hammer on 12, [Demonstration], 10, hammer on 12, slide to 15, 10 hammer on 12, slide to seven. Then you go down the 5th fret, he played, five, hammer on seven to 10, back down five, hammer on seven, down the three. So it sounds like this [Demonstration] And he goes back into the same chords you know. [Demonstration] So the way I just played the riff is how I’m tab it out. But as long as you did the chord formations, you can pretty much work it every much you want. So, good luck guys. Hope you have fun with this one, and take care.