John Mayer style guitar lesson!

If you're an intermediate guitar player looking to level up your overall guitar playing skills, John Mayer is a perfect study partner! In this lesson we'll learn how he uses his fingers, the pentatonic scale and CAGED chords to create some Mayer Magic! Now, those are some pretty big subjects individually, so to combine them all is not an easy task! However, with this very cool little study piece we've created, we can guide you through all the elements in a gentle and fun way!

The lesson

Firstly I just want to say a big thank you to everyone on YouTube who has watched this video! It's currently, at the time of writing this blog post, at around 140,000 views. Its great to see so many students online working with our material and getting a lot out of it! So, thank you again, and without further ado, here is the video! Also, grab the download for the audio track right here!

The tab & scales

Let's kick off by learning the main lead part that we have written in a John Mayer style. This lead part utilises the C#m pentatonic scale shape 1 & 2, and also uses the CAGED chord system. First up, let's check out that tab, so that you have it as a reference as you work through the track:

Right now the main focus in terms of understanding the theory is knowing which pentatonic shapes are at work here. We're using the C#minor pentatonic box 1 and 2, as shown here:

The chords!

Another important part of this lesson is learning the chords and groove. Dan breaks down the groove nice and clearly in the video, and the chords that he uses for that section are shown here. Remember, you can use any version of these chords you like, but these are the shapes we recommend starting with (again based around the CAGED system)