![]() The section begins around the 6 minute mark. I have covered most of what happens in the studio version of “Gravity.” John added a new section to the song in the live version heard on the album Where the Light Is. You bend to C in one case, and land on a fretted C in another. There are a few spots where John ventures outside the pentatonic and plays a C note. He plays in a legato manner by hammering on, pulling off, and sliding along the second string. Instead of playing up and down the pentatonic patterns vertically, John Mayer reaches into his bag of Hendrix tricks again by moving horizontally. The guitar solo is played using G major pentatonic. The D7 chord provides a dominant push back to the tonic pitch, G, and you switch back to G major at this point to resume the G to C6 chord changes. You can play these chords in various forms. In the key of G minor, bVI and V are E major and D major. In minor keys, it’s common to use bVI to V7 movement. When that Gm/Bb chord is played, You have temporarily switched keys to G minor. It’s identical to the C6 chord shape used in the verses only moved down a whole step. The first thing I notice is, the Gm/Bb chord could also be thought of as a Bb6. Where did John get this idea? Perhaps he stole it from some other song, or maybe he came up with it on his own while experimenting with different chord shapes. These chords come from the parallel scale of G minor, so we have some modal mixture happening here. But things take a turn halfway through with the Gm/Bb and Ebmaj7 chord. The particular chord shapes might be new to you. There isn’t anything unusual about the first two chords, Am7 and D7. The chorus is based on the following chords. ![]() We’ll do more soloing in a minute, but next we need to go over the chord changes in the chorus. He bends from A to B, which is the 2nd and 3rd. ![]() John begins in pentatonic pattern four working around the root note, G, on the second string 8th fret. In other words, you’re not playing minor over major as is often done in blues-based music. This makes sense because we’re in the key of G major and there’s nothing unusual about the harmony. Moving on, the guitar soloing you hear in “Gravity” is played in the G major pentatonic scale. You don’t need to learn everything John played. I tend to stick with these parts when I play the song. I worked out a few variations by listening to the recording and viewing the tab. John improvises over the chord changes and doesn’t seem to play the same thing twice. On C, I’m thinking C6 (or Am) and a first inversion of a C chord in “G form”. I like to visualize G major pentatonic pattern 2 and 3. These parts also make use of notes that all fit into the G major pentatonic scale, so you can think of them that way. The G chord is embellished with a 6th and 2nd. ![]() John is tapping into his bag of R&B and Hendrix licks to play around the chords. Let’s take a closer look at the rhythm part. ![]() Then there’s a lead guitar that I’ll get to in a moment. John added a rhythm guitar track that plays bits and pieces of the chords along with some embellishments. His bass player takes care of the root and his organ player sustains the rest of the chord. Now, John Mayer doesn’t actually play the C chord this way. You could think of C6 as an A minor chord with a C in the bass position. |G / / / / / | / / / / / / | C / / / / / | / / / / / / |īut, there’s still an A note present in the C chord. These are now chords I and IV in the G scale. You clearly hear C played on the bass guitar. Once the rest of the instrumentation comes in, the chord change is G to C. You can tap your foot the same way, or you can tap every three beats. That means each measure contains 6 eighth notes. Instead of being in the common time signature of 4/4, this song is in 6/8. We need to stop right here and discuss the time signature. These are chords I and ii in the G scale. It sounds like the organ I hear at the very beginning of the song plays the chords G and Am. ![]()
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