Gravity Guitar Lesson

Gravity is one of John Mayer’s most iconic songs, and actually first appeared on his live album Try! (2005) with the John Mayer Trio. It was then and was later re-recorded for his 2006 studio album Continuum. So, without further ado, let's dive in…

Gravity intro

We'e going to kick off with the intro section, which is of course the most iconic. The beauty of this section lies in it's simplicity, but alongside that comes the difficulty of playing a lead part that is so beautiful. To play a simple line, including bends, like this can be more challenging than at first seems. So, the basic chord structure here is | G | G | C | C |. So, in a 6/8 time signature, we have two bars of G major and two bars of C major.

When we're thinking about the lead over the top of these changes, we're working with the G major pentatonic scale, and John Mayer is positioned in box 4, which looks like this:

The only part of the intro to consider is the way we are working through the chords. Yes, it is a basic I - IV progression, but the way Mayer plays them is very Hendrix-esque, so we need to assign a few pentatonic shapes to chords. This is where your knowledge of the CAGED shapes really starts to come into it's own. The two shapes we're using, and the pentatonics linked to them are as follows:

So as you can see, when we're playing the G major chord using this E shape, you can play licks within the box 2 of the pentatonic. When we do the C major as a G shape, you can play licks within the box 1 pentatonic shape. As you build a library of more licks within these shapes, you can start to get really creative with this. For now use the licks I'm showing you in the video and get them learnt really well!

Gravity verse, pre chorus and chorus!

Next up we're moving into the verse and pre-chorus section (and the chorus of course!). The good news is that for the verse and chorus we are playing the same two chords over and over again. That | G | G | C | C | progression just keeps on rolling. Your task is to input as many lovely CAGED licks that you have in your arsenal within these sections. You can copy the one's I am showing you in the video, or even come up with your own. Both are totally valid!

The first point at which we see a change to the core structure of the song is in the pre-chorus. This section has the progression | Am7 | Am7 | D7 | D7 | Gm | Ebmaj13 | D7 | D7 |. Some of these chords may feel a bit unfamiliar to you, so here they are:

As you play through these chords you want to arpeggiate them if you can. You don't need to fixate on anything too exact here (although you can learn it exactly as I show in the video), so just try and keep pa consistent 8th note movement as you change through the chords. That will be enough to get the theme of this section across successfully!

Gravity Solo

Finally, we will tackle the solo! This is one of the most beautiful, vocal style solos I've heard on a pop track, and it's worth learning note for note. Remember, once you have learnt it note for note you can take your favourite licks and apply them to your own improvisation… But let's get it learnt first! So, the whole solo is using the G major pentatonic, and we're actually sliding up and down almost all the shapes, so let's outline those below…

As you work through all the parts of the solo, be sure to think about these boxes and relate them to the notes you are hitting. This is such an important step in being able to get the most out of the track, and getting the licks applied to your own improvisation later down the line.

Jam with the Band…

Finally, if you want to watch Camille, Harrison and myself play through the whole track, you can do so here. I welcome you to come and play along with us… Just pretend we're your band! I'm excited to hear how you get on with this, and if you're a Club member please let us know about it in the community channel! All the best, Jed.