Chords for How to play a Green Onions cover using a Nashville chord chart Tutorial Booker T and The M.G.'s

[Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [F] _ _ [Ab] _ [Bb] _ [Fm] _ _ _
[Bb] _ [F] _ _ _ [Ab] _ [Bb] _ _ _
[Db] _ [Ebm] _ [Bbm] _ _ _ [Eb] _ [Fm] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [N] _ _
Hello, in today's video I'm going to be talking to you guys about how to use a Nashville chart.
Now if you've never seen one of these before, you're probably looking at it and going,
what the heck is this?
Is this even music?
Yes, it is.
And today I'm going to be teaching you what it means and how to use it.
It's simpler than you might think.
And this song, Green Onions, is a perfect example of an introduction to a Nashville
chart because it's a pretty basic song.
There's three chords, there's a simple little lick that you do with your right hand.
It's pretty easy.
So you have the title of the song and then you also have the key.
In this case it says in F.
Now with this particular version of a Nashville chart, it's not quite
as important that it says in F because it actually lists the chords you're going to be playing.
You have F, you have Bb, and you have C.
However, some Nashville charts wouldn't say F, Bb,
and C.
They'd say 1, 4, and 5, in which case the key would be very important because it
could say in F, in A, in Bb.
And as long as you know what the 1, 4, and 5 chords are of that key, you can transpose
it to any key, which is quite amazing.
_ _ Right here you have the time signature, which is 4-4 time, a pretty standard time signature.
And then right here you have the intro.
Now your first chord here is F, and then these little division looking signs mean that you
simply just play an F chord for all of these.
So it's F all the way through the intro.
Pretty basic.
And then down here you get to, I guess, the main chorus or whatever of the song.
Green Onions is a kind of interesting song.
It doesn't really have a verse or chorus, and in fact it doesn't even have lyrics.
So it's just kind of like your intro, and then this repeated a few times, and then it
goes to the coda, does that a couple times, and ends on F.
So basically for this main part here, you have, once again, you have F for the whole first line.
_ Then it goes to Bb, back to F, and then for the final line it does C, Bb, and then two
measures of F, and then repeats for as many times as it's decided.
_ Down here in the corner we have a little note about how the timing's supposed to be played.
Two eighth notes is supposed to be swung, like a traditional swing timing.
And then end on Q of F.
So let's take it over to the keyboard and see how it's supposed to be played.
Okay, so here we are at the keyboard, and now let's see how Green Onions is supposed
to be played.
For the intro line, we have an F chord all the way through the first line.
And you might be wondering, what should I be playing? _
Well for Green [Fm] Onions, there's a predetermined bass line that you can do, and it's really quite simple.
So let's check it out.
For the F chord, we'd start off by playing an octave _ of F, _ _ play it again, _ and then we'd
do the flat 3, the flat 3rd of F, which is an A flat, [Ab] _ and [Bb] then a 4th.
[Ab] And then that's it.
And then do it [Fm] again. _ _ _
_ So you have F, [Abm] F, A [Bbm] flat, B [F] flat.
_ _ [Abm] _ [F] And that's all you do.
_ _ [Abm] _ [Bbm] _ [Fm] _ So [Abm] that's your bass line for [Bb] F.
Now what would happen if, after you do the intro and the
first line of the chord, you come to B flat?
What would your bass line be for that?
Well, same thing.
1, [Dbm] 1, flat [Ebm] 3, 4.
Which in the key of B flat would [Bbm] be B flat, B [Dbm] flat, D flat, [Eb] and E flat.
[Bbm] So that's all it is.
_ _ [Dbm] _ [Ebm] _ [Bbm] _
_ _ [Dbm] _ [Ebm] _ [Fm] Back to F. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [E]
[C] And then here we come to a C.
What do we do here?
Well, 1, 1, [Eb] flat [Fm] 3, 4.
[Cm] Which would be C, C, [Ebm] E [Fm] flat, F, [Ab] and we go back to B [Bbm] flat, _ _ [Dbm] _ [Eb] _
and then [Fm] F.
_ [Abm] The [Bbm] last two. _
[F] And [Abm] then we repeat again.
[Bb] [G] Back up to here. _
Now you also might be wondering, what should I be playing with my right hand?
_ Well, there is an F minor pentatonic scale that you can do.
And what's interesting about Green Onions is that in some [F] songs, what you have to do
for each chord change is actually change the scale that you're playing in.
But for Green Onions, the F minor pentatonic scale actually works over all the chords,
which is very interesting.
So here it is.
It is F, [Abm] A flat, [Eb]
B flat, [Cm] C, E flat, and then it goes back [Gb] up to F.
So because it's called a pentatonic scale, that means that there's only five notes in
the scale before it repeats.
You have 1, [Ab] 2, 3, 4, 5, and then back up to F. _
So basically you can pretty much do whatever you want with this scale over your chords,
which is why Green Onions is so fun to play, because you can literally do anything, and
there's an infinite amount of things that you can do with this one little scale that
fit the song.
So, for example, what I would do for the song, I'll start off with an intro here, is I'd
just sit there and just do this. _
_ _ _ _ Which by itself doesn't sound like a whole lot, but when you have it with the band, [Fm] it
sounds really good.
_ And then [A] you could go up to B flat, you know, imagine that I played all this, we'd go to
[Db] the B flat. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Fm] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ But that's why Green Onions is so cool, because you have basically a whole bunch of freedom
to do whatever you want within this scale and these chords. _ _ _ _
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