RIP JOHN LENNON - What He Taught Me about Guitar

I recently saw a question on quora about John Lennon's skills as a

guitar

ist. Do you know how good he was? Was he one of the best or wasn't he that special? and I liked Kym Chaffin's answer: "in the music world, there are a dozen good

guitar

ists, especially now, while great songwriters are the rarest thing imaginable." So I agree with that, and Lennon was a rare and prolific songwriter. He wrote hundreds of songs. What surprises me is that no two sound the same. Okay, but getting back to the question of Lennon's guitar skills, he was primarily a rhythm player. and you know, rhythm players don't get any love.

And John could even be a little messy, but he was always tremendously original in his guitar parts. I mean, almost every Beatles song that John plays has some cool Lennon touch that adds something exciting and catchy to the title track. So I'm going to show you why John Lennon is one of the most influential guitarists of all time and why I maintain that he is truly one of the greats. So stick with me as I explore

what

John Lennon

taught

me about the guitar and my top three lessons from Lennon. Lennon's number one lesson for me is that the rhythm guitar is a vital voice in any song and production.

I mean, it can set the song, it can push it, it can tie it together and make the whole song more unique. I mean, think of something simple like the eighth-note-to-triplet intro riff on Ticket to Ride. I mean, it's so simple but so memorable, right? Well, then there's the opening note response of I Feel Fine and the suspended barre chord riff that runs through the entire song, so it becomes a test of endurance for your hand, you know? They're all barre chords, but he makes it sound so easy, right? So another example is John's relentless alternating down and up strumming triplets on All My Loving.

It's a little tiring to maintain that for the entire song, but John did it perfectly and, again, made it sound easy. Now I've always loved his fast, super distorted triplets, the console overdrive, and the full introduction to Revolution. I mean, come on, that's cool. and it just goes to show that Lennon was a force to be reckoned with as a guitarist. Because it's not just that he could play those riffs, it's that he came up with them. Okay, Lennon lesson number two is chords as a counterpoint to the melody. So I'm talking about the power that chords have to influence how we hear and feel a melody.

Lennon wrote many memorable melodies with lots of movement. You know things like imagining. It sounds something simple and sings: imagine there is no heaven, it's easy if you try, there is no hell below us, above us only heaven, like four times it repeats itself, right? but then it has the range of: imagine all the people living for today, I... right? So John wrote a lot of complex melodies like that, but he also wrote a lot of songs that creatively use single-note melodies, with very little movement. It's kind of one of his trademarks. so the melody is maintained and remains in one place while the ground beneath it moves and changes.

Well, some examples, like let's say in the verses of Help: He basically holds a C sharp while the chords move: When I was younger, much younger than today, I never needed anyone's help in any way. Look, there's almost all of the C sharp there. When I was younger, much younger than today, I never needed anyone's help in any way. so he uses another single-note melody for Girl's middle octave: she's the kind of girl who puts you down when friends are there...same note every time. I'm just sleeping: when I wake up early in the morning... And your bird can sing: tell me you've got everything you want... okay, then we have the verses from Strawberry Field: no one, I think, is in my tree, or Not always, sometimes I think it's me.

Lucy in the Sky: Yellow and green cellophane flowers that rise above your head. only in the end does he leave it. So a song like I Am The Walrus uses a bunch of semitones in the first line and then a single note for most of the second line: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together... TRUE? Then he says: look how they run like pigs from a gun, look how they fly. So there are a lot of loose notes there. and then there's Julia. The whole verse has almost the same note: half of

what

I say doesn't make sense but I say it only to communicate with you, Julia.

It only falls at the end. so that's a key part of what John

taught

me; the importance of choosing unique chords in a melody. and a key part of this is John's use of descending bass lines and leading tones in his chord progressions. then like Help, which descends B A G F# Ee: Help, I need someone, help, not just anyone, help, you know I need someone, help. I won't sing it in its octave. in Lucy in the Sky it does a descending bass from A to G to F sharp to F. or there is the A to a with G in the bass in I Am The Walrus: I am the as you are he as you :   You know that drop, that's great. and there's the fingerpicked D C B Bb on Dear Prudence, and that brings me to Lennon lesson number three: the beauty of fingerplaying.

So it's 1967 and after John has been playing chords for years, he and his friends go to India and stay at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and our favorite 60's era hippie folk, Donovan Leitch, it is there. and he teaches finger-picking John Merle Travis style. He uses a really simple pattern. It is the thumb, the index finger, the thumb, the middle finger. and the thumb plays alternating low notes like this. but hey look, John is always innovating, so when he returns to England and works on the White Album, he's already playing his own unique patterns and doing something a little more original with his fingerpicking. and so on, Dear Prudence, builds in little pauses and has the upper strings play this two-note melody while the bass descends in that classic Lennon style. so he watches what I have to do with my hand to maintain that two note melody.

It's a bit complicated, right? then there's the introduction of Happiness is a Warm Gu: she's not a girl I miss much. do-do-do-do-do-do, oh yeah. Everything always sounds deceptively easy, but you can't imagine it any other way. Okay, so a Lennon song that I've always loved but never learned until now is Julia. and it's a confessional song of sorts, written for John's absent mother. So it's a kind of dream. It's sincere. It's really surplus. Like John's soul was naked, right? it definitely foreshadows where he's headed on post-Beatles material like the Plastic Ono Band LP. so I discovered the picking pattern and chords. and it's in standard tuning, it uses hand position chords in the key of C, but it's actually in D because he plays it with a capo on the second fret. and John modifies Travis's standard lead by playing the bass note and top string melody on each downbeat. so he says like this.

Always that bass and high note together and that really makes it his own. So after learning this part, I asked myself: Do you know how I can play Julia in my own way and honor John in the process? and I thought of two things. First of all, I wanted to highlight the really beautiful and amazing chord progression by adding vocal harmonies so you would really hear those chords. and I wanted my harmony parts to be inspired by what the Beatles did in John Because's ballad from Abbey Road. a song that I love. then secondly, to make sure the harmonies stayed in focus and you could really hear them, I put a rubber damper on the fingerpick guitar, which is this Gibson J-50.

Okay, and I doubled the part so that the notes explode and die, you know, listen. Leave plenty of room for vocals. this is what the recording sounds like. This is my way of honoring and thanking John Lennon for everything he has taught me: half of what I say doesn't make sense. but I say it only to reach you Julia Julia Julia child of the ocean calls me so I sing a love song Julia Julia shell eyes breezy smile calls me so I sing a love song Julia so there you go, three things I learned from John Lennon.

First of all, the rhythm guitar is a vital voice in any song. and lesson number two, the power of chords as melodic support and counterpoint, and lesson number three, the beauty of fingerpicking and breaking away from standard chord patterns. Alright, I hope you enjoyed this. You'll find 200 more videos like this with lots of other tips and fun at guitardiscoveries.com. While you're here, like, subscribe, and hit the bell to stay tuned for future videos and discover what I've learned from other great guitarists. So next week I'll share more details on how I shot my Julia cover.

I hope you don't miss it. In the meantime, you can watch and listen to the full song right now.