YouTube guitar lesson by Lauren Bateman (owner, LB Music Schools) teaching Fats Domino's "Kansas City." The video explains the 12-bar blues form and walks through an easy chord progression in A using the chords A, D, and E (A for 4 measures, D for 2, A for 2, E for 1, D for 1, A for 2). Instructor shows a simple strumming pattern (four down strums per measure or down-up-down-up) and notes that playing A7/D7/E7 makes it sound more bluesy.
Questions this video answers
April 23, 2017
Lauren Bateman, owner of LB Music Schools (Massachusetts)
A, D, and E (can be played as A7, D7, E7 to sound bluesy)
A for 4 measures; D for 2 measures; A for 2 measures; E for 1 measure; D for 1 measure; A for 2 measures
Four down strums per measure (or down-up-down-up)
Chapters
Hi, my name is Lauren Bateman and I'm the owner at LB Music Schools in Massachusetts. And what I'm doing with you today is I'm doing some simple songs. We're gonna do a song by Fats Domino called Kansas City. It is a blues song, and that means we're gonna be playing a 12 bar blues. This song has 12 measures of music that keep repeating over and over and over again to make up the entire song. So if you can learn the progression and memorize that, then you can play the entire song. And you can actually play a lot of blues songs too, if you learn this. So this is a very simple song. So what we're going to do is we're going to start off with four measures of A, A major. That's the smush chord where everything is stuck in the second fret. So the three chords we're going to need is A D and E. Those are the three chords you're going to need for this song. We don't know them yet. Go learn them. Come back. So we're gonna start with four measures of A major. So we're gonna use a four count, simple song. Keeping it simple. Strumming. So four strums per chord, four down strums. And we're gonna play an A major chord for four measures. So we have to count to four four times. So it's gonna be a one, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four. 1, 2, 3, 4.
Awesome. All right, after that, we're gonna play a D chord for two measures. So we're gonna count to four twice.
D. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, Four.
And then we go back to A for two measures.
One, two, three, 4. One, two, three,4.
Then we're gonna go to E major for one measure.
One, two, three, FOUR.
Back to D for one measure.
Followed by A major for two measures.
One, two thousand three, four.
Awesome. That's it. That's the entire song. It is those. Sorry, those 12 measures repeated over and over again. I think it repeats it like three or four times. So let's start from the beginning. We're gonna start with that A chord. So if you want to write it down, It's a for four measures, d for two measures, a for four measures. I'm sorry. A for two measures, e for one, d for one and a for two. Let me repeat that. A for four, d for two, a for two, e for one, d for 1 and a again for 2. So let's take it from the top. So here we go. We've got.
One two one, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four. 1, 2, 3, 4. One, 2, 3, 4.
1, 2.
Got a D, D, 2, 3, 4. D, 2, 3, 4. To A, 2, 3, 4, A 2. Now E, E, 2, 3, 4 and D, 2, 3, 4 and A 2, 3, 4, A.
And then we would go right back to the beginning and play it all over again. So here I'm gonna do the first couple verses of this song and we'll do it at that same tempo. I'll try and keep it the same.
Well, I'm goin to Kansas City.
Kansas City, here I come.
I'm goin to Kansas City.
Kansas City here I.
They got some pretty little women there and I'm gonna get me one.
I'm.
Gonna be standing on the corner 12th street and fine.
I'm gonna be standing on the corner 12th street of mine.
With my Kansas City baby and a bottle of Kansas City wine three, four. One, two, three, four.
There you go. That was the chord progression. Twice we went through two verses. Pretty simple song. Now, if you want to make this a little bit more bluesy and you know seven chords, all you have to do is play all these chords as seven. So A seven.
And D seven and D seven.
You can make it sound kind of bluesy. I know I'm doing funky stuff with my strumming too. And you're like, ooh, how do I do that? Don't worry about that too much for now. Just stick with the four strum pattern. You can do. It would require you kind of like shuffle the song. I don't want to get into shuffling just yet. So keep it to either a down, four downs or down, up, down, up.
Still kind of swinging it just a little bit from muscle memory. So there you go. That is Fats Domino, Kansas City. Very simple song. Sticks with the 12 bar blues progression. So if you can play that, then you can actually play a lot of blues songs. So there you go, simple songs. Hopefully you can pick it up quick.
