While many artists take years of shows and albums to come into their own, and then continue to search and experiment in order to stay inspired, Taylor found the well of his music so early on\u2014and it\u2019s never dried up. Somehow, his music seems to exist outside of musical fashions and the times. In sound and spirit, the songs on Taylor\u2019s 2015 album, Before This World<\/a><\/em>, are clearly tied to \u201cCarolina in My Mind,\u201d \u201cFire and Rain,\u201d \u201cSweet Baby James,\u201d and other classics from decades before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Taylor\u2019s music, the guitar provides much more than accompaniment. His singular approach to the instrument\u2014picking style, chord choices, bass lines, melodies, embellishments\u2014creates a landscape that\u2019s fundamental to the songs. Even after a 50-year reign as one of our defining singer-songwriters, the source of standard repertoire played by countless acoustic guitarists, Taylor still stands out as a highly unusual player\u2014with idiosyncratic technique and a sense of harmony far apart from the standards of folk or rock guitar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In this lesson we\u2019ll explore what makes Taylor\u2019s guitar work so distinctive, and play examples inspired by his ageless songs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first stop on this tour of Taylor\u2019s guitar style is, naturally, \u201cSomething in the Way She Moves,\u201d first released on his self-titled Apple debut in 1968\u2014and rerecorded a few years later in a more relaxed take for his blockbuster Greatest Hits<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Put away the flatpick, grab a capo, and try Example 1,<\/strong> based on the intro and opening of the verse. As with everything in this lesson, pick the down-stemmed notes with your thumb and the up-stemmed notes with your fingers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the core elements of Taylor\u2019s style are in evidence here. He tends to play in A, D, and E, capoing up as needed for his voice, rarely higher than the third or fourth fret. In this example, capo at the third fret and play A shapes, which sound in the key of C. Change chords frequently, picking a prominent bass line. And in the last measure, tag the phrase with an A-chord hammer-on that is a JT signature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also notable is what is not<\/em> here: a steady alternating or monotonic bass, or any kind of set picking pattern. In bars 1 and 3, pick the bass notes on beats 1 and 4; in bars 2 and 4, on every beat; and in bar 5, only on the downbeat. Taylor\u2019s style is based far less on repeating patterns or arpeggios than conventional folk\/country fingerpicking. It\u2019s more akin to keyboard playing, with the two hands working independently. The thumb leads with the bass line, and the fingers fill in around it with partial chords, single notes, and melodic figures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One major quirk of Taylor\u2019s technique is his use of what he calls \u201cbackwards\u201d fingerings for D and A,<\/strong> with the index finger on top, as shown in this lesson\u2019s chord diagrams. Check out Taylor\u2019s YouTube guitar lessons<\/a> for a close-up look at these fingerings, which he credits for helping him develop his signature hammer-ons and pull-offs (on the first string on the D, and on the second string on the A). For me personally, Taylor\u2019s fingerings for D and A are just plain awkward. Most of the time it\u2019s possible to work around them, as I did in the lesson videos. See how they feel to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are JT guitar moves that just work better with his fingerings, however, such as the main rhythm pattern in his great \u201990s song \u201cCopperline,\u201d shown in Example 2<\/strong>. If you fret the first string on the D with the index finger (as he does), your index can easily shift over to the fifth string to fret the Bm11 bass note, then return to the first string for the hammer-on going back to D. Taylor\u2019s fingering is a likely reason he found this riff in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taylor\u2019s Apple debut\u2014recorded in the same studio around the Beatles\u2019 White Album<\/em> sessions\u2014introduced such enduring songs as \u201cSomething in the Way She Moves\u201d and \u201cCarolina in My Mind,\u201d and also showcased his feel for R&B in songs like \u201cKnockin\u2019 Around the Zoo.\u201d But the album never quite broke through commercially\u2014not helped by the fact that Taylor was out of commission for a while after its release, kicking a heroin addiction that dogged him for years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The second time was the charm, though: Taylor\u2019s 1970 follow-up album, Sweet Baby James<\/a>,<\/em> struck a deep chord, bringing him to the forefront of the emerging singer-songwriter movement. With the title track as well as \u201cFire and Rain\u201d (transcribed in the January\/February 2020 issue<\/a>) and \u201cCountry Road,\u201d Sweet Baby James<\/em> may as well be a greatest hits collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Taylor mostly sticks with standard tuning, he does sometimes use dropped D\u2014notably on \u201cCountry Road.\u201d Example 3 <\/strong>is based on the \u201cCountry Road\u201d intro. After an opening bass run, play the D chord pull-off\/hammer-on riff that he uses, with many variations, throughout his repertoire. He applies the same basic pattern to the A chord. Except for the quick bass runs at the ends of measures 2 and 4, play the low D as a pedal tone throughout, as the chord above it changes from D to C to G. The resulting C\/D and G\/D are two examples of pianistic slash chords, as used elsewhere in this lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For clarity, pick the chord tones simultaneously with your fingers rather than strumming across them. As Taylor continues in \u201cCountry Road\u201d and in other songs, though, he freely mixes fingerpicking with strums on the high strings\u2014flicking up and down with one or two fingers. He keeps longer nails on his right-hand thumb and fingers, and in fact he has a YouTube tutorial on reinforcing his nails with layers of fiberglass tape, which keeps them intact and helps him achieve a bright tone without fingerpicks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Right from his earliest albums, Taylor has used a wider harmonic vocabulary than the simple, repetitive chord progressions of folk, country, and rock. One pivotal influence was church music. In his audio memoir, Break Shot<\/a><\/em>, he said that hymns such as \u201cOnce to Every Man and Nation,\u201d \u201cJerusalem,\u201d and \u201cO Come, O Come, Emmanuel,\u201d which he first heard while attending boarding school in Massachusetts, were \u201cbedrock stuff.\u201d He added, \u201cThose hymns were a musical education to me. I learned them on the guitar, and they taught me all I know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hymn connection makes sense especially as an inspiration for the constant chord movement in Taylor songs, which recalls the way an organist reharmonizes a hymn differently with each pass. Even in a folky song like \u201cSweet Baby James,” Taylor changes chords almost every measure, cycling around D, Bm, G, A, F#m, and E in an unpredictable way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than laying out in, say, repeating four-measure blocks, Taylor\u2019s chord progressions keep changing. He uses the apt metaphor of a wheel. As he put it in my AG<\/em> interview, \u201cI just basically get a wheel rolling and then hop on the thing and try to ride it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another key influence on Taylor\u2019s harmonic sense came from the standards and show tunes he heard in the family record collection and on periodic visits to Broadway. An early sign of that can be heard in Taylor\u2019s take on Stephen Foster\u2019s \u201cOh, Susannah,\u201d recorded on Sweet Baby James<\/em>. Rather than accompanying the song with the usual I, IV, and V chords, Taylor overlays a lightly jazzy progression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Example 4,<\/strong> capo at the third fret to play again in A (sounding as C), using all seventh chords. In measures 4 and 7, hold the Bm7 shape and just switch to a bass note to the open sixth string for the D\/E. Taylor frequently uses voicings like this, with the bass note of the chord raised a step (as in C\/D, A\/B, etc.). Play freely, in sync with the vocals, and mix chords and arpeggios as you like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy music doesn\u2019t sound like jazz to me,\u201d he said when I asked about the extended chords he uses. \u201cThere are some simple jazz chords\u2014some 13ths and augmented fifths, I play a lot of major sevenths and plus twos\u2014but really a limited jazz vocabulary, for sure, and also very low on the neck, and usually keeping to the root of the chord in the bass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another early song that showcases Taylor\u2019s elegant use of extended chords is \u201cDon\u2019t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,\u201d released in 1972 on One Man Dog<\/a><\/em>. Example 5<\/strong>, based on the first part of the verse, opens with an Em9 that is a common Taylor shape. Don\u2019t bother fretting the fifth string, since you\u2019re not playing it. Keep your fretting fingers in place on the top two strings, and move the bass note to the open fifth string, for the A13sus4. Then a lovely Dmaj9 to F#dim7 change brings you back around to the Em9 and the next turn of the wheel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In measures 7 and 8, notice also the classic Taylor change from Bm7 to E9\/B and back to the Em9. The sound is more akin to a jazz\/pop piano ballad than a typical guitar tune. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While Taylor\u2019s songs are often packed with chord changes, they don\u2019t feel dense or busy, especially because he plays chords so sparingly. Bass lines really drive the progressions. Taylor\u2019s first instrument was cello, which may well be one reason he brought that orientation to guitar. In many Taylor songs, you could play the bass line by itself behind the singing and get the gist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the case with \u201cThe Frozen Man,\u201d from 1991\u2019s New Moon Shine<\/a>. <\/em>The song was sparked by a National Geographic<\/em> story about a 19th-century polar explorer whose corpse was preserved in the ice for 100 years\u2014though Taylor has commented that the true topic is his father, who actually spent two years in Antarctica as a medical officer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Example 6<\/strong>, based on the opening of the verse, play chords in the key of D, using the inversions D\/F# and D\/A to hold off the resolution (to the D root) until the end of the phrase. Play sparsely while singing, and add short bass runs and riffs, like those in measures 4 and 7, during pauses in the vocals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a number of songs, Taylor picks a guitar melody\u2014distinct from the vocal melody\u2014to create an instrumental intro or interlude. One nice example is \u201cMexico,\u201d from 1975\u2019s Gorilla<\/a>, <\/em>which opens with a little fingerstyle instrumental before kicking into the song\u2019s main Latin-style groove. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Example 7,<\/strong> capo at the second fret and use open chord shapes in the key of E (sounding in the key of F). Focus on the bass and the melody, using few other chord tones. As in much of Taylor\u2019s music, both the melody and the chord changes are highly syncopated, anticipating the downbeats throughout. Note also the measures of 2\/4 that break up the 4\/4 meter. For another example of this kind of fingerstyle piece, check out \u201cEnough to Be on Your Way\u201d (transcribed way back in the July 1998 issue<\/a>), which opens with an instrumental that sounds like a traditional Celtic tune. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Starting in the \u201960s, Taylor tuned into Brazil\u2019s bossa nova scene, and he cites composer\/instrumentalist Ant\u00f4nio Carlos Jobim as having a big impact on his music. You can hear the Brazilian influence in a Taylor song like \u201cSecret o\u2019 Life,\u201d from JT<\/a> <\/em>(1977), with its gently swaying rhythm and jazzy changes. In 1985, he celebrated his experiences performing in Brazil and soaking up its vibrant music culture in the song \u201cOnly a Dream in Rio.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taylor\u2019s song \u201cOn the 4th of July,\u201d a standout from his 2000 release, October Road<\/a>,<\/em> is another that clearly taps into bossa nova. Example 8 <\/strong>shows a pattern similar to the first part of the verse. Play bass notes on beats 1 and 3, each followed by a chord on an offbeat. The one-finger A\/B is a JT chord used in many other songs. He also often plays F#m7 with a one-finger barre\u2014not fretting or picking the fifth string.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later in \u201cOn the 4th of July,\u201d Taylor sings a series of phrases on a single melody note while the harmony changes underneath\u2014an effect famously used in Jobim\u2019s \u201cOne Note Samba.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Taylor\u2019s most recent album, 2020\u2019s American Standard<\/a>,<\/em> he returned to the show tunes and standards that were such a formative influence\u2014from \u201cMy Blue Heaven\u201d to \u201cGod Bless the Child\u201d to \u201cThe Surrey with the Fringe on Top.\u201d What\u2019s satisfying about the project is that he did not, say, sing standards with a pianist, jazz combo, or orchestra; instead, he played them as guitar-driven James Taylor songs, with some guitar support from John Pizzarelli<\/a>. When Taylor kicks off \u201cMoon River,\u201d the intro is straight out of \u201cSomething in the Way She Moves.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The last example in this lesson is based on his version of \u201cTeach Me Tonight,\u201d written in the \u201950s by Gene de Paul and Sammy Cahn. Taylor\u2019s recording on American Standard<\/em> has two guitar parts, one supplying soft bossa-style chords and the other playing more ringing arpeggios. Example 9<\/strong> is based on the latter part, with a sweet-sounding set of chords that\u2014unlike with typical jazz guitar\u2014mostly use open shapes. In measure 5, hold a Bm7 and move the bass note over to the sixth string for the E7sus4\u2014a characteristic JT move. The open Amaj9 voicing in measure 7 is another chord that instantly marks this as a Taylor arrangement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taylor\u2019s guitar style is so distinctive and dialed in that it\u2019s deceptively hard to reproduce. But for any guitar-playing singer-songwriter\u2014or any guitarist creating accompaniment parts\u2014there are some key takeaways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Guitar is surely not the only or even the main reason why people have so deeply connected with Taylor\u2019s songs for so long. His melodies, words of empathy, and soothing voice are at the center. Yet it\u2019s remarkable that his fingerprint as an artist can be heard in every detail of his guitar work, even in the chord vocabulary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taylor\u2019s songs were among the first I ever played, and revisiting them for this lesson felt like a homecoming\u2014to a place that\u2019s both familiar and new again.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Way He Moves<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
JT-Style Fingerings<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nRural Routes<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nTurning the Wheel<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A Touch of Jazz<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"James](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/AG335-JAMES-TAYLOR-EX-5-1.png?resize=1024%2C940&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nAll About the Bass <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Fingerstyle Melodies<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nBrazilian Spice<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a>Back to the Well<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nGuitar Lessons from JT<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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