Backyard Acoustic Groove in E (ft. "Posters" by Jack Johnson)

Lesson #193 • Nov 20, 2018

Instructional PDF 3 pages

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A visual companion to help you follow this lesson. Expands on what I teach in my video with step-by-step guidance, easy-to-follow graphics, and practical tips.

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About this lesson

Today’s warm up exercise features three different riffs that groove around the E-major chord. These riffs involve a fun mix of barre chords, muted strings, walking bass notes, and playful flourishes via hammer-on & pull-offs. This is inspired directly from Jack Johnson’s song “Posters”, which was one of the first songs I became determined to learned when I first started playing guitar. Even 15 years later, I still find myself going back to these riffs quite often when I pick up the guitar. I’m excited to teach it to you in this lesson, I hope you enjoy!

Enjoy this lesson?

If you dug this exercise, I recommend checking out the Jack Johnson song Posters - which is 100% where all these licks come from. This was one of the songs I busted by butt to learn in my first few years of playing guitar (~2002), around when Johnson’s album Brushfire Fairytales first came out. It was tough to learn, but very satisfying! Especially because Johnson uses a lot of these little techniques in various other songs he’s written - which led me to learning many more songs from his catalog.

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Title (short)
Posters by Jack Johnson
YouTube URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRcGpFex8Tg
Thumbnail (video)
Video thumbnail for Backyard Acoustic Groove in E (ft.
Thumbnail (pdf)
PDF thumbnail for Backyard Acoustic Groove in E (ft.
Slug
193
Lesson URL
/lessons/193/
PDF num pages
3
Patreon URL
https://www.patreon.com/posts/22883540
Discussion URL
n/a
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