Lauren Bateman teaches the Steve Miller Band's 'The Joker' on guitar for beginners. The verse starts with a bass line on G at the 3rd fret, walking up through A and D strings with a muted feel. The song uses G-C-D-C chords, held for 2 beats in verses and 4 beats in choruses.
Foreign.
Lauren Bateman here. And we're going to be doing the Joker by the Steve Miller Band, which features this really, really cool bass line. So I'm going to show you how to count this out so that you can get the right timing. And I'm also going to show you some really great strumming patterns you can use for the choruses of this song.
So, as you know, the verse really features this bass line. There is a guitar strumming, and we'll talk about the chord progression shortly. But it's really the bass line that sticks out for this song. And the great thing, even if you're a beginner, you can play this song. It's a great little finger exercise, and it's a great way to work on timing. Now, I always tell people the best thing to do is to sing the rhythm. I don't want to get into talking about, you know, 16th notes and eighth notes, especially if you're a beginner. You may not be really fluent in that language. So. So what I want you to do is just think of the timing. Bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. All right, if you can sing the rhythm, you can play it. And we're going to go through this step by step and break it down. So we're going to start on our G note, which is going to be the third fret on the top string. Okay. And we're going to play that twice. Okay, so it's going to be two GS, not G, G. Then we're gonna do a walk up on the A string. So we're gonna play the open A string. And then we're gonna use our first finger to play the second fret and then our second finger to play the third fret twice.
So we've got G G on the top string. Now move down to the A string. Open string, second fret. Three. Three. So we've got.
One more time.
Okay, so that's the first part. Now we're going to do something very similar. We're going to move down to the D string and we're going to do a walk up there.
So we're going open D, second fret, and then back to open D. All right, so so far we've got.
All right, so our timing has been the same so far.
Here it is from the.
And now this is where our timing changes. On the end. We're going to start with that walk up. We're going back to the open A string, second Fret. And then we got a bunch of notes coming in. We've got four threes. One, two, three, four, two twos. And then two opens. And that's going to loop us back to the beginning. So that whole last section is open two, all on the A string. Now, third fret four times.
Second fret twice, open string twice. So just that one section is.
Okay, so from the top, we've got.
1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 1, 2. All right, so that's how sometimes when I count stuff like that, I count them in the grouping instead of 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and a 1, e and a 2, e and a. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1. Bum, bum, bum bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. 1, 2, 3, four. 1, 2, 1, two. All right, so sometimes that's how I count different groupings, just so I know how many times I'm playing each note. So some of you might be saying, well, Lauren, you know, your bass line sounds a little bit different than mine when I'm playing it. Well, what I'm doing is I'm playing with more of what we call a staccato feel. So instead of letting the notes ring out like this.
I'm bouncing those first two beats. I'm going. I'm letting them mute. So I'm pressing the string down, I'm releasing the string, and then I'm pressing it again and releasing. So when you release a string, it mutes the note. So I've got more of A. Instead of mine sounds more like this.
And for that open string, if you notice my fretting hand, I'm muting it with my fretting hands. You're playing an open string, so you can't mute it with your finger. There's no finger playing the string, so I'm just using my hand to mute it. Now, that bass line is going to come back and take care of all of the verses. But what if you aren't good at that yet and you want to strum over it? Well, we're going to talk about what we're going to do for the strumming of this song, especially on the chorus section. All right, so the chord progression for this entire song pretty much stays the same for the whole thing, except in a couple sections, you might have to hold out the D chord a little bit longer, but for the most part, it is G, C, D, C. But the thing is, on the verses, the chords are only two beats, whereas on the choruses, the chords are four beats. So we have to pay Attention to that when we're counting this out. So going back to the verse, what I would do is I would just follow along with the bass line. We've got.
So basically we're just doing 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4and. All right, so I would go G1 and just two down strums. Now we got the next chord, C. Okay. Then we got our D chord, and then we got our C chord.
And you'll notice I'm muting with my strumming hand here. So I'm going down, down. And then I'm. You can kind of hear the strings, too, hitting a little bit. Not intentionally. I'm not doing, like a percussive type rhythm. I'm just trying to mute the strings.
So all I'm doing is I'm just in time and going one and two. Okay. So I'm hitting that on the next downbeat, one and two, as if I was strumming the strings, but I'm not actually strumming them. I'm just hitting them to mute them. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 3 and 1 and 3 and. Sorry, I played the wrong chord on that last one, but. But the rhythm was correct, so that's what I would do on the verses. Now, when we get to the choruses, the timing is going to change up. We're going from two beats per chord to four beats. So what are a couple strumming patterns? The one that I kind of hear the most coming through there is a little bit of improvisation, but the one I hear coming through the most on this chorus, because this is where the guitar finally comes into the Bix more, is 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and down, up, down, up, down, up,. Down, up 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 & down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. So it's going to sound like this. One and two and three and four. And one and two and three and four. And one and two and three and four dot.
I play music in the sun.
I'm a joker I'm a stroker I'm a midnight joker all right, so you can hear how the guitar really comes to life here. And all I'm just doing is a very light 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.
So if you were going to go from the bass line into that strumming pattern, it would sound something like this.
That's probably the trickiest part of the song, is going between those two different types of timing, but practice really hard, and I'm sure you guys will get it. If you guys enjoyed playing this bass line, well, I have a whole playlist of really cool little bass lines and licks over here that you can use to help work on your finger dexterity and get your fingers moving even faster. Go check out the playlist right over there.
