Bossa Nova Rhythm Part 1

The subject of this tutorial is bossa nova rhythms. And if you're 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're sitting in with a band or playing a wedding reception or something and somebody calls a jazz standard or something in a bossa nova or samba style, and you're 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're used to things really centering around two and four, but bossa nova rhythms really focuses on one. And this is a style that sort of came about in the late 50s, early 60s. It was really only huge for about six years, but it's worked its way into some jazz standards that you've probably heard. And so the underlying rhythms, many people believe, comes from a clave style, which is sort of based on African drumming patterns. And so it's a style of music that has a lot of different origins and 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'll actually look at the right hand pattern. You'll notice that I'm playing on a nylon string, which would be pretty typical for this style. However, you can feel free to play it on a steel string, and in a 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're going to play this over some jazz changes, and so I just want to walk through these chords. Now most nylon string guitars don't have fret markings, so I'll try to do my best to outline where my fingers are as we go through these. The first chord that we're going to look at is a D minor 9 chord, and 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. A couple different ways to play that. When we're playing in more of a jazz style, here's a very typical chord voicing. 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've got the 2nd finger on the 5th fret of the 5th string, then I'm using the 1st finger on the 3rd fret of the 4th string, 3rd finger on the 5th fret 3rd string, and 4th finger on the 5th fret of the 2nd string. We're just playing those middle 4 strings. So that gives us a D minor 9. The next chord that we'll look at, and you can see all these grids in the tab at the beginning of the video, is a G13. Now this is sort of a substitute chord for a G7. Or I could 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 G7. So in this case we've got the 1st finger on the 3rd fret of the 6th string, 2nd finger on the 3rd fret of the 4th string, 3rd finger on the 4th fret of the 3rd string, and 4th finger on the 5th fret of the 2nd string. And so I'm playing the 6th string, 4, 3, and 2. So that gives me my G13. Next is a C6-9 chord. That looks like this. And this is a chord that can be used in place of a major 7 chord. There's different ways that people know those. So in this case I've got the 2nd finger on the 3rd fret of the 5th string, the 1st finger on the 2nd fret of the 4th and 3rd string, and then the 3rd finger on the 3rd fret of the 2nd string, hitting those middle 4 strings again. And this is something that's known as a 2-5-1 in jazz. And you can hear with these chord voicings we've just looked at, it sounds a lot more convincing to use these voicings and these extensions. If we just play that as Dm7 to G7 to Cmaj7, 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'll look at is an Fmaj9 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 C6-9. In this case I'm going to go all the way up to the 8th fret. My 2nd finger will go on the 8th fret 5th string, 1st finger's on the 7th fret 4th string, 3rd finger's 8th fret 2nd string, and 4th finger on the 9th fret 3rd string. Kind of complicated when you first learn it, but once your hand gets used to just going down in that sequence, I usually go 2-1-3-4 until you just learn to put them all down at once, you'll 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 2nd chord in a harmonized major scale is a minor 7. So we're thinking this is 2. So in this case it would be like in the key of C. So D minor or D minor 9 would be my 2 chord. This G would be the 5 chord. G is 5 notes past C, and C would be the 1 chord. So that's why that's referred to as a 2-5-1. And then this F could be thought of as the 4 chord of that key. So 4 chords are major, and so we've got this major 7. So we've got that fingering, we're plucking the middle 4 of that. Now we're going to do something called a minor 2-5-1. And this revolves around doing it in the minor key. So the first chord that we're going to start with is a B minor 7 flat 5. And so I'll give you the fingering for that. We're going to use the 2nd finger on the 6th string, 7th fret. The 3rd finger on the 4th string, 7th fret. 4th finger on the 7th fret, 3rd string. And then 1st finger comes back here to the 6th fret on the 2nd string. I'm plucking the 6th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd string. So that's a B minor 7 flat 5. And we can think of that as like the 7th chord out of the harmonized major scale. Now we're going to go to an E7 sharp 9 chord. And this belongs to the family of altered dominant chords. So in a minor 2-5-1, your 5 chord is going to be altered. And that will a lot of times have either a sharp 9, flat 9, sharp 5, flat 5 kind of alteration to it. So in this case, this chord will look like this. I'm going to take the 2nd finger on the 7th fret of the 5th string. 1st finger goes to the 6th fret of the 4th string. 3rd finger's going to go to the 7th fret of the 3rd string. And 4th finger's on the 8th fret of the 2nd string. You can hear how that has sort of a very tension-filled sound. And so that's sort of indicative of an altered dominant sound. Next we're going to add something to that or change it. This would be known as a tritone substitution. And this is 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're using this E7 sharp 9. And we're substituting in a tritone sub. And this is going to be a 13 chord. We already had that G13. So this will actually be the same voicing. We're just going to take it up to the 6th fret. So 1st finger and 2nd finger are on the 6th fret of the 6th and 4th strings. 3rd finger's on the 7th fret of the 3rd string. And 4th finger's on the 8th fret of the 2nd string. Bb13. And to end, I'm going to end on a minor chord. And this will be sort of an extension of a minor chord. So we're going to play a minor 11. This will be an A minor 11. This is something we could play in place of just a regular minor 7 chord. So I've got the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers here on the 5th fret. I'm on the 6th, 4th, and 3rd string. This looks a lot like that minor 7b5, except we're going to back the 1st finger up one more fret. So that'll be on the 3rd fret of the 2nd string. So that's an A minor 11. And then, in order to do a repeat, to really want us to go back to that 1st minor chord that we were on, we're going to throw in another altered dominant chord. In this case, it's going to be an A7b13. I guess you could also call it an A7 sharp 5. Sometimes they'll call chords different things. So in this case, I'll have the 1st finger and 2nd finger on the 5th fret of the 6th and 4th string. 3rd finger and 4th finger on the 6th fret, 3rd string and 2nd string. So there's another altered dominant. And hear how that makes me really want to go back to that 1st chord because it has that tension. So once you've looked back at the tab at the beginning of the video and memorized those, a good exercise would be just learning to change between them and getting your fingers used to it. So we've got the D minor 9, going to G13, C6 9, then F major 9, going to B minor 7b5, and then this E7 sharp 9, going to Bb13, and then we have A minor 11, going to A7b13. And that gets you through the progression. So you can hear how those sound very indicative of jazz music because of the extensions that we add to the chords. And memorizing those voicings that we just looked at can actually give you a lot of ammunition for faking your way through a jazz song. And even not knowing a whole lot about that style will get you pretty far with these voicings. So now that we've gone through those chords, let's look at just a typical bossa rhythm that we could put in. And bossa is a little bit different than some traditional jazz forms in that eighth notes are not swung. It's a very straight up kind of feel. So there are certain songs you would use it on, but you don't want to use it on every jazz song that you play on, obviously. But anything that has bossa in the title, you can definitely use it on. And you'll recognize the sound of it pretty quickly after you learn it. So going over this rhythmic feel, we'll do it very slowly. We're going to do a very easy form of it, and then at the end of our tutorial, we'll do a little bit more advanced form. So starting on this D minor 9 chord, let's just look at the pattern that we're going to use. We're going to start with our right hand fingers just plucking those four strings. So I'm just assigning a finger to each string just like you would with a classical guitar. Thumb, index, middle, ring finger. And I'm just going to pluck everything. But then, as I let that chord ring, I'm going to drop my fingers back down and mute the strings. I'll let the bass note continue to ring, but I'll cut the notes off by laying my fingers back down. And then on beat two, I'll pluck the chord again. Plucking with the fingers. So that gets us through the first two beats of the bar. Then we're going to actually change up the bass notes. This will sound like I've got a bass accompaniment going on. I'm going to try to grab the fifth of the chord in the bass. So to do that, I'll take the second finger and drop it down to the fifth fret of the six strings. This is an A note, which is the fifth of that D minor seven chord, or in this case, a D minor nine. And as that chord continues to ring up here, I'll use my thumb on the right hand to hit that bass note. And then right after I hit that on the end of that beat, which is beat three, I'm going to use my fingers and pluck that chord again. So basically I'd have... That gets us through that D minor nine, and then we'll just do the same thing on the G13. So we've got this chord form. Now in this case, my root note is already on the sixth string, so I can't really go down and grab a fifth easily. So a lot of times when your root is on the fifth, on the sixth string rather, you'll just hit the same bass note instead of changing to the fifth. So those two together would look like this. So that gets us through those first two chords. Going to the C6-9, we're fretting the chord. Same thing, plucking the chord. And then the top strings. And then in this case, we can grab the fifth down here with the second finger. And then we're going to have to sneak up real fast to grab the F major nine. And then we can grab the fifth below it as well. So in order, let's go through that whole line. So we'd have... Probably the hardest change in the whole thing. Moving on to the second line, we'll grab the Bm7b5. Here, once again, that bass note will just stay the same because it's on the sixth string. And then we're just going to raise up to grab that E7-9. And here it's a little difficult because we've got two chords in the same bar, so we're just going to have hitting the chord together, muting and hitting the rest of the chord. And then we're going to quickly switch to that Bb13. Now you can leave your third finger and fourth finger where they are, and just change your first and second finger around to grab that Bb13. The cool thing is you hear that bass line follow the chords. Then we'll go to the Am11, and then the A7b13. And then that gets us ready to set up the Dm9 chord once again. So, now I'll play that through at speed. So that's our beginning rhythm for this, to sort of get that syncopated feel between the bass and the chords, and switching from the root to the fifth. So that'd be a great start to get used to these jazz voicings, and also getting that particular bossa feel. Now, these get a lot more complicated as we go, and in Bossa Rhythms Part 2, we'll actually start looking at how to change that up and make it even a little bit more complicated. But this will get you down the road of feeling that rhythm and getting these chord changes going. I'm Sharon Isbin, and I'm about to walk you through how to play Batucada by Isaias Savio. In the style of this samba-bail kind of mixture, put the accent on the first note. Not. But. And then play out the bass. So it becomes...