Mary Did You Know Guitar Lesson

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome. I'm gonna be doing a wonderful song here called Mary Did. You'd know. Now the one that I. The version that I'm doing here is Kathy Matea's version, alright? And you can see on my website, I have all the notes there for the picking and the strumming. Now we do have a number of different chords we're gonna be using for this song. I think the most difficult one is the B7 chord. Fortunately there's no barre chords, but we do have an E minor chord. Alright. Sometimes I play it with my first and second fingers. If I'm going from that B7 chord, I will play it with my second and third fingers, okay? Just because I prefer to have pivot points, alright? My second finger doesn't have to move at all on that transition. We have a G chord, we have a D chord, we have a C chord, we have a D with an F sharp in the bass. This one's going to be played on a walk down. So when we get there, I'll show you. I'm probably going to go from a G chord and then I'm just going to move my finger. Okay? We have a nice little walk down that's going to come in in this song, I'll show you. And again, like I said, we have B7. We also have E minor 7. Okay? So there's a number of different chords. If you don't know those seven chords. For example, if you don't know E minor 7, just play an E minor. If you don't know a minor 7, you can just play a regular A minor. The one that's probably very important is the B7 because the alternative to that is playing a B bar chord which is a double bar. So it's even harder. So if you haven't played a B7 chord a lot, I'd recommend going from e minor into B7. Just working on that chord transition and learning that chord because it is very important to this song.

So I'm going to show you two different ways to go about playing this song. When I listen to this song, I hear a lot of picking. At least this version of the song. There are piano versions that also sound very nice. But the reason I chose this one is one because it's a female singer and I'm also female, so a little easier for me to sing. But also had some really, really nice guitar parts and nice picking. So let's start off with this intro which has the chord progression of E minor, D, C and B7. Alright, we're going to start there and then we'll work our way through the verses into the bridge in that final verse. So what we're going to be doing is we have E minor to D to C and then to B7. Again, if that B7 is new, you might want to practice going from C into B7. So. So the easiest way to do this would be to strum.

And then add some picking on the end. Now, the timing of that that I'm doing and what I hear kind of in the song is it's going to be 1, 2, and, and 4. So 1, 2, and, and four down. Pick, pick, pick.

And what I'm doing here is I'm just writing up the bottom three strings. I'm going from the E string to the G string. Okay. So it's a strum. And then I'm just going, okay. And you could do all up picks on those. So it sound like this.

All right. And you heard there I hit some wrong notes. But the great thing about these chords is as long as you're playing in time, if you're playing a chord and you hit the wrong note, you're not really hitting a wrong note. It's just a different sounding note. So don't worry if you make a mistake. So if I were going to play through the intro, it would sound like this.

And then I would end on a strum on that final B7, because then we're going to work our way into the verse section. So let's try that together again. The timing is 1 and and 4. 1 and, and 4. 1 and, and four. And if you're not used to these kind of syncopated rhythms. Okay. Which I teach in my expressive rhythm course. What you can do is just sing it. If you can't count it, try humming it.

Find if students can hum or sing a rhythm, they're more likely able to play it on the guitar. So if you're not the greatest at counting it, don't worry, just try.

All right, here we go. One, two, here we go.

All right. You probably heard I made a little mistake in there. But see, I didn't let the mistake throw me off. I just tried to stay in time and kept playing. Now, you also might be hearing a little bit of a rake on that strum. I'm not just going.

I'm not doing this quick strum. I'm doing a very slow strum.

A little bit more like we're raking over the strings. Because if you go too quick, you're just going to get.

Which will also sound fine. But if you get more of that rake.

Now you can hear.

Kind of raking down the chord there. And I'm going to continue this into this verse section. So we've ended on this B7 chord, which I also raked at the end. And then she starts singing Mary did you know. And we start off very much the same, the same chord progression. E minor D, C, B7, E minor D, C, B7. And then the third repetition through, we change. Okay, so you're going to see there's a split measure. There's going to be a G and this D F sharp. This is that walk down that I was referring to in the intro. So what do we do here? In the split measure, each one of these chords is only two beats. So the G is going to be two beats. The D F sharp is going to be two beats. And then we have an E minor which is going to be four beats. So I would just play a G chord.

And I'm choosing to use the bright G chord here. I don't know when I play live which one I'll do. But I kind of like the bright sound on this song because you're going to hear a lot of these E and B strings ringing through. So we've got this G and we're just going to go one and two and ready? So it's going to be one and two and. Okay. And you can pick any strings. Think here I'm going bass note, the low E string and I'm doing G, B, E. You could also the low string and you could also go D, G, B. I don't think it really matters. What's the most important part is this.

That walk down that comes in. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1. Okay, so did you see that? One and two and three and four and one again. One and two and three and four, and. And then back to E minor 1 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Okay, so that whole thing together is going to sound like this.

Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?

The child that you delivered.

All right, so then we move into arm a minor 7.

The child that you delivered.

Here comes our E minor 7.

We'll soon deliver you.

And we're gonna end on a B7 strum there. So that is the most intricate part of the verses, is the timing on that. Alright, so we got 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. Alright, so let's try this first verse section with the easier strum in picking. And then on the second, second verse, I'm going to show you how you can spice it up a little bit more. So let's take it from our intro. Ready? One, two, ready? M.

Well, Mary, did you know your baby boy Someday walk on water Mary, did you know that your baby boy Would save our sons and daughters? You know your baby boy has come to make you know.

The child you deliver.

We soon deliver you Mary, did you know.

All right, so there you go. And you can see on, I don't know if you noticed on that E minor 7, I forgot to put my pinky down. But I did get it down in time for the picking. So you can build these chords over time too. So there are some variations on this picking pattern, but overall, this is what I'm going to give you. It's very much the same, except we're not going to be strumming, we're just going to be picking everything.

Okay, so the timing of this is I and 2 and, and 4.

And what we're doing on these six string chords, we're jumping from VI to the fourth string.

Okay, so it's going 6, 4, 3, and then 1, 2, 3. We really want to make sure we count time. That high E string. So it's 6, 4, 3, 1, 2, 3.

And on the five string chords, it's the same except we're going 5, 4, 5, 4, 3. 1, 2, 3. Okay.

All right. And then on our D chord. Chord, it's going to be four, three, two, one, two, three.

Okay, so G chord, E minor chord. Six, four, three.

One, two, three.

Right. C chord. Five, four, three. One, 2, 3, 5, 4, 3. One, 2, 3. And then D chord. Four, three, two, one, 2, 3. All right, and the timing is going to be one and two and, and four. One and two and, and four. So it's going to sound like this.

Okay. And that B7 chord is a five string chord.

Beautiful, beautiful sound. And on that split measure, you could kind of just do the same thing we were doing before.

Okay, so we're just. That's not going to change at all. The only thing is we're adding a little bit more dynamic with the. With the picking. Okay, so just a little bit more going on makes it a little bit more tricky because we're skipping over strings versus just doing the strum. So that's where the added difficulty comes in. So if you're not good at skipping over strings yet, you might want to stick to the first version. But let's try the second Version before I talk about the bridge and the last verse. So from the top, we got one, two. Mary.

Did you know that your baby boy gives life to a blind man? Did you know that your baby boy will calm the storm with his hands? Did you know that your baby boy walk their angels true? You kissed him, little baby, you've kissed the hand of God.

So you can hear how there's a lot more picking, and my hand wants to do even more than that. And you can do that on this song. Particularly when we get into this. This bridge section, there is a lot of build. And the cool thing about this song is it's an eighth note pattern. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And like I said, as long as you're holding the chord down, you really can pick what you want. Here I'm just going to improvise whatever I want Here.

You can see I'm kind of adding and putting fingers down to create different notes and different voicings for the chord. But for this song, as long as you're holding the chord down, you really can pick anything as long as it's in time. Okay. I want to give you a specific picking pattern to go with. But for me, if I was going to play this song over time, particularly when I get to the bridge section, I might pick up the picking and make it expand and get more powerful, because this bridge is the powerful part of the song. So in this bridge, we're really starting with the walk down. So we, you know, blind will see.

The devil will heal, the dead will live again.

The lame leap, the dumb speak the praises of lamb.

I can't hit those notes, but that's where she goes. Okay, okay. And again, you could even add in strumming if you want to expand it more.

The blindness.

Speak. Or so the dumb will speak the praises of the lamb.

And I'm not going to torture you with singing that again. That's definitely a little out of my range. But you can see how you can build this bridge. And as a performer, I'm always thinking of ways that I can improve dynamics and really make things come alive. And then we got this final verse, which is very much like all the other verses, except the very, very end. So I just want to talk about that. So we have the sleeping child you're holding. We've got the A minor 7 chord.

Holding is the great.

I.

Am.

All right, so we kind of got this different ending. We got E minor 7 for 1 measure B, 7 for 1 measure, E minor for one measure D. And then we have C chord for half measure, B7 for half measure, and then. And then it ends beautifully on an E minor chord. Now, if you enjoyed learning how to play Mary did you know on the guitar, I would highly recommend you go check out my Silent Night lesson right over there where I show you how to pick that song beautifully for this holiday season.