Summary: Trio John Mayer
This is the title track for the album Trio, which is three of the best blues rock musicians of the day, jamming some outrageous blues rock! John Mayer really comes alive in this album with the raw guitar sound and some amazing guitar licks. It's perfect for learning how to get that chunky sound on the guitar.
The Theory: A Blues & CAGED Chords
For the two parts that we are looking at in this lesson, we need to understand a little bit of basic guitar theory. Firstly, the main riff is based around an A7 chord. This allows us to combine the dominant chord with minor pentatonic riffing. As you can see from the diagram below, the b7th element within the A7 chord really allows us to bring in that minor pentatonic sound. The chord and pentatonic shape are the basis of the entire riff.
When we get to the chorus (or B section) we move through an F# minor chord and G major chord. We utilise the pentatonic shapes that are found underneath these particular chord shapes, in a very Hendrix-esque way. If you'd like to learn more about this, check out this course for free. Below you can see the chords we are using, next to the scale shapes used to playthrough. Try to get these memorised as they always apply!