Sam teaches how to play Steve Lacy's "Looks" on guitar, breaking down the intro, verse, and chorus with specific chord shapes like Dm9, Dm7, and B♭maj7. He covers strumming patterns, finger positions, and the exact timing of chord changes throughout the song.
Looks by steve lacy. And it just kind of repeats like that. Let's get into it. All right. This song is composed of three sections. The intro, the verse, and the chorus. Let's learn the intro right now. Fortunately for you, it's just one chord, a D minor 9. And sometimes you can just play the thinnest five strings. And sometimes I've seen him live. He plays. He takes his pinky off a little bit like a. So just like keeping that bar with your index and then removing your pinky can add a little bit of spice. And so the strumming pattern for this, you're going to keep this rhythm of up and down with your hand, but you're only going to make contact with the strings on certain points. It's going to sound like this. And then he does it again, so really slowly. It's kind of like. And it. It happens to land. Most of the time, it's on the upbeat. Downbeat. Up, up, up. And then we're gonna go into the main part. Just listen, use your ears. And if you just keep this up and down motion with your hand with the eighth notes, you're gonna get it. Okay, so after your intro, we have our verse, which is gonna start with basically the same chord that we just ended with on the intro. Instead of a D minor 9, just gonna take your pinky off D minor 7. And it's gonna go between a D minor 7 and a C sharp minor 7. The exact same shape, one fret down. And the strumming pattern, it can be a little tricky to get, but I want you to just listen. Going to sound like this. And on the. 1, 2, 3, 4 is when you switch that. So listen. Listen closely. Now. I'm going to do all the little scratches in between. Just alternating between those first two chords. One more time, super slow. Cool. So it's going to go. So the next two chords are going to be a B flat major 7. Make sure your index finger is just barring that whole fret. And it's gonna go from B flat major seven to a seven. That's gonna be. This one, I would say is actually a little bit easier. The distinction that's really important to realize is that on the first two chords, the. The second chord comes in before the beat. And this. This time the second chord comes in like on the beat or after the beat. So before it's like. You know what I'm saying? It's like. But now it's. It's right on the downbeat. So it's. And that is Just up, down, up, down or down, up, down, up. So the whole sequence slow is. Again, If you just. You gotta. You gotta just keep this going, this up, down, motion. I'll go through it one more time super slowly. When in doubt, go back and listen to the record. You guys can get this. And one of the other things to note is that you're going to cut this B flat major seven chord short. It's going to be like. It's not going to be. Don't let that last note ring. Make it short. As opposed to those first two chords. It's going to be. You know, it's kind of. You're letting everything ring. Now let's get into the chorus. The strumming for this is going to be the same as those first two chords in our verse. It'll sound like this. And usually he does like a break on that, the last chord of those last two chords. So I recommend just holding it out. So the chords we're going to use for this are C7 and then the exact same fret or the exact same shape, four frets down to an A7, then to a B flat major seven, our old friend that we already use in the song. And then we're going to go to a G minor 7. I'd recommend playing it like this with your middle finger on the bottom and then your ring finger, barring the rest of it. And then we're going to add. We're going to turn this G major, this G minor 7, to a G minor 9 by adding our pinky up. So it's going to be. So again, the strumming is the same as those first two chords. So if you can just get that one down, this part will come easy to you. It's going to sound like this. I'll play it slow. You're going to add that on the. And this is the b flat major 7 to the G minor. Cool. Now you basically have the whole song. All right, my phone just died. I'm gonna try to make this quick. Basically, the form of this is going to be intro, which that happens twice. Like, you go through the whole. And then we're gonna play our verse, which goes through the sequence twice. Then we're gonna play our chorus, which goes through the chorus sequence twice, straight into another verse. Go do that twice straight into another chorus. Play that twice. After you play the second chorus, we're gonna go back to the intro one time. So, like half as long as we did it at the beginning. And then we're gonna go through another verse twice and then it ends. Hope that was clear. Leave more requests in the comments. Sorry it took me so long to get this one. This is very highly requested and I will do more requests. Also have something different coming soon. So goodbye. Thank you for watching. Have a nice day. Sam.
