Bossa Nova Guitar Plucking Technique & E Major Chords

Series Summary

The style of music known as Bossa Nova originated in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950's, influenced by American jazz and Brazilian samba. João Gilberto, Vinicius de Moraes and Antônio Carlos Jobim are just a few of the musicians who popularized the Brazilian jazz style, prompting performers like Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra to record Bossa Nova songs. The nylon-stringed classical guitar is the musical instrument which gives Bossa Nova songs like "The Girl From Ipanema" that definitive smooth sound.

In this series of free video music lessons you'll learn how to play Bossa Nova classical guitar. Expert Ryan Larson shows you the essential scales and chord progressions you'll need to know to play Bossa Nova songs, taking you through a piece measure by measure, and offering tips on the distinctive plucking technique used by Bossa Nova guitarists.

Video Transcript

"RYAN LARSON: So today we're going over some nice simple Bossa nova chords and what I'm really going to show you first are some really nice lush chords on the first three bottom strings as the roots. So using the E string, the A string and the D string as roots. So by learning these new chords, you really get a sense of how bossa nova uses a lot more rich chords and you can put these chords and you can put these chords into your vocabulary. And then I'm going to show you your E major scale and we're going to show you how to go through a piece and to use the E major scale and utilize it as a basis for you to find out how to find where to voice all these different chords on the guitar and how to find all these different roots and then apply the appropriate chord for each one of these different roots. So we're going to go through, learn some nice simple chords and then we're going to go and see how we can apply them to playing through a Bossa nova tune."