A guitar lesson by Lauren Bateman teaching how to play Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" on acoustic guitar. The instructor explains chord shapes (Am, Em, G, Dm), a percussive strumming technique (muted downstrums / "karate chop" and trebly upstrums), the verse chord timing (two beats Am, one beat Em, one beat G), and how to vary dynamics and add body percussion for solo performance.
Today I have an amazing song by Bill Withers that has this really cool driving bass line. So I'm going to show you how you can perform this so that you can sing and play it at the same time. Now, the chords for this song are all open chords, so they're pretty simple. We have an E minor chord, we have a G minor chord, we have an A minor chord. And every once in a while we get this funky D minor chord. Now for. I know for some people that can be a tricky chord. So what I would practice is getting in and out of that chord from it. Maybe the E minor chord, since that's the change we're going to be working, working on. Now if you play your E minor chord with your first and second fingers, you can get into the D minor by moving this first finger down one and putting the other two fingers in place. So you might want to just practice going back and forth between that because that's the big chord change that gets you into that D minor chord.
So we're going to get a little percussive with the rhythm here. All right. You could keep it simple and just do a simple straight eighth note pattern. But I think it will add a lot to the song if we do two different patterns with two very different dynamics. So what's the strumming pattern we're going to be using? It's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and play. It is down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. So let's just start with an A minor chord. Okay. And let's try that. I just want you to get the timing. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up.
Cool.
Now we're going to add this almost reggae like feel because we're going to accent.
Just the up strum. So how are we going to do that? So to mute the down strum, you're not going to do anything really different with this strumming hand. You're going to strum down, but instead of hitting and letting the strings ring through, you're going to hit the strings with your palm. Okay. So it's going to be.
Kind of call it the karate chop. It's almost like you're hitting your guitar just a little bit. Alright. So it's. I'm actually. You can hear me hitting the body of the guitar and I'm going.
So it's 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
Okay, really, really cool. Percussive. Let's just try that again. So it's to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And.
You probably notice on those up strums, I'm not getting. Not getting those bass notes. It's really just kind of the bottom three or four strings, probably more the bottom three strings. So it's going to have a very Trebley feel, too. But I think it adds a lot to the song. So especially when you incorporate in the bass movement that I was talking about in the intro. Now, big part of this song is this bass line that goes.
So this is a huge bass line that really, really gets featured in this song. And this movement is created by us changing chords. So the chord progression we're going to be using in the verses for most of the verse is going to be two beats of A minor. So it's going to be A minor, and then we're going to change to an E minor chord. Now, in this case, I would recommend making this E minor with your second and third finger. It's a really easy transition from that A minor chord.
So when you're playing your A minor chord, to get into that E minor, you could. There's a couple things you could do. You could leave the second finger in place and pivot the first finger up. Creates a nice pivot point from E minor and then another nice pivot point into that G chord that's coming next. Or you could lift these two fingers up and then go into your G chord that way. So whichever way works easier for you. I'm probably gonna go into this E minor, since that's the one I usually play the most, right into G chord.
So it's two beats of A minor.
A beat of E minor, and a beat of g. So it's 1, 2, 3, 4.
1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3, four.
So that's the timing, but now we want to put that strumming pattern that we just learned over the top of it. So it's going to be one and two and on A minor, three and four and. Okay, one more time.
Now you can hear by doing this strumming pattern accent, we're kind of getting that. We're kind of getting that bass line.
It's not ringing out as loud as a bass line, but you can hear it, listen for it.
Hear that bass line. Because we're doing that kind of muted strumming pattern, how it makes that bass line really, really ring out, and it gives a lot of flavor to the song. So let's practice that a couple more times. Ready? So we got 1 and 2 and 3 and 4m.
Now, some of you might be saying, lauren, my bass note is not ringing out like yours. It kind of sounds like this just might mean that when you're here hitting that chord and you're doing your kind of karate chop here, just go a little bit further, closer to the bridge, and that will really beef things up. So if you hold that a minor chord, it's kind of like a sweet spot. If you're too far up, it's going to sound shallow. So you got to be kind of right in front of that bridge.
Make those bass notes ring out a little bit better. So that's verse one. What do we do when we get to the next verse? Because they kind of open up in this song, and there's also a section of the song where there is no guitar at all. So I'm going to show you something cool we can do there. But there is a dynamic that comes into this next verse. We get some violin, we get some orchestration that comes in. Now, typically, if you're playing this, you're not going to have, you know, violin and a whole band behind you, but what can you do to open this up more? I would take out the muting and I would just play the same exact strumming pattern. And we would get 1 and 2.
And 3, 4, and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2 and three and four, and 1 and 2 and 3, and 4.
And so here we're just doing the same exact thing. Just no fancy muting over the top. So before we get into that interlude and what we're going to do over that, I'm just going to play through the first couple verses so that you guys can hear the difference in the dynamics and also have an opportunity to play along with me. Now, you guys can always follow along with my notes on the website. And if I'm going too fast, use the settings cog to slow me down. But we're going to take it right from the top. One, two, Ready? And.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
It'S.
Not warm when she's gone away.
Ain't.
No sunshine when she's gone she's always gone too long Anytime she goes away.
Wonder this time where she's gone.
Wonder if she's gone on the same.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone this house just ain't no home Anytime she's gone away.
Oh, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
So you can see there. We come to this end interlude section, which is really cool because there's no guitar, there's no. There's no instrumentation. There's nothing. Now you could just sing. You could just go right into the.
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
And that whole breakdown there. What I like to do, especially when I'm performing by myself, is I actually like to keep some percussion in there. And what am I doing? I'm muting my strings so they. I don't get this reverb on my guitar. I'm holding the strings so that they don't reverberate and I'm literally punching my guitar. Now I'm not hitting it with my knuckles. That's going to give you a very sharp snare like sound. What I'm doing is I'm actually hitting it with the fleshy part of my palm.
By doing that, I'm actually creating more of a bass drum, kick drum. And where am I hitting it? I'm hitting it down here, this. This kind of hippie part.
Okay.
Up here you'll get a shallow. A shallow sound. But here.
You will get a nice kind of bass kick drum sound. So it'll sound like this 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Okay.
1, 2, 3, 4, and.
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
And then once that's all done, you go right back into.
Now, if you're intrigued by this percussive style of playing guitar, then I highly recommend you go check out my Maggie Mae lesson right over there, where I'm going to show you a really cool and very popular percussive strumming pattern.
