Plucking Technique for Bossa Nova Guitar in B Major

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: Today, we are going to go through and learn our three most basic chords that fall on the guitar, our major, our minor and 7th chords. And we are going to learn them in three positions, on the E string, the A string and the D string. And we will go through slowly and show you how they are written down so you can write it down at home and notate it. Again, it's nine simple chords, nothing hard. And then the last thing we will learn is our B major scale, which we can utilize, and we are just using it on the bottom three strings. So as we go through and analyze a tune, when we have a 4 chord, we can go: 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, there's the 4. If we have a 5 chord: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So there's our 5, and we can play our chord. Or if we have a flat 5, we can go: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then bring it down a fret to flat it and you get the appropriate chord. So as we go through, we are going to use this major scale to find the roots for the chords that we are going to play, and then we are going to use the chords that we learned to play the actual chord voicings. And again, every chord voicing you have works on every fret on the guitar. It is always a major chord. I am just moving the root. So just by learning these three chords, you will have all these frets under your fingers on the first string, the second string and the third string. It is that easy."