Chords for Laugh Laugh by The Beau Brummels – Guitar Lesson Preview

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_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [Em] We're going to take a look at a song that [N] every once in a while just pops into my head
and I can't get it out.
It is so cool.
This is 1965, the Bo Brummels.
Now they were a San Francisco band and really like one of the bands that formed the San
Francisco psychedelic sound that later turned into Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead
and all those other guys.
But these were one of the pioneers along with the Charlatans.
Not going to go too much into the whole history of San Francisco music right now.
But the Bo Brummels were basically a duo with a backup band too.
But I don't want to sell the rest of the guys short.
And kind of came into _ _ being I guess when vocalist Sal Valentino, who was a San Francisco kid,
had got a gig and needed a band.
And so he called up his buddy, high school buddy, Ron Elliott, guitar player, songwriter.
And Ron brought a few friends together and they got some gigs around San Francisco.
Big time place in San Mateo a little bit later.
And then Tom Donahue's fledgling label, Autumn Records, came calling.
And they put out some, they had two big hits.
And this was of course Laugh Laugh.
I guess I should introduce the song.
The other one came out right around the same time, a little bit later.
Just a little, so to speak.
_ _ And really interesting chord progressions.
And Ron just put together some cool tunes.
Nice [Ab] arrangements.
We had a little harmonica in this one.
Nice little guitar licks. _ _ _ _ _
We have some really interesting chords that I want to kind of review here in [Ab] this segment.
And that is, I'm going to talk about, I'm going to review, go [B] first into seventh chords.
Seventh chords out of the E families.
Now, there are two really important [E] elements in a seventh chord that determine exactly
which seventh it is.
The root is not one of them.
The root is going to be a fixed or a constant, as is the fifth.
So all the E seventh chords, or all the E seventh family of chords, will have Es and
Bs in them.
[Bb] But the variables will be the third and the seventh.
Now the [E] third of an E major chord is G sharp, which is here.
And that makes this chord major.
If we flat the third to make it G natural, [Em] we have E minor.
[E] Okay, so the third [Em] determines whether the [E] chord is major or minor.
Then we have two possibilities for the seventh.
The seventh of the scale would be D sharp.
An E major scale would have [Abm] E, F sharp, G sharp, A, [Dbm] B, C sharp, D sharp, [E] and then E.
So if [Am] we put in the D sharp as a [G] seventh, which would now, the best way to finger this
[E] chord would be like this.
I've got, I've moved my second finger to G sharp, my third finger to the B in the bass,
and I'm using my index finger, my first finger, for the D sharp.
So [Em] this chord has a major seventh in it, and consequently is called a major seventh chord
because of the D sharp.
But we also play seventh chords with a flatted seventh, and [E] that would be flatting the D
sharp to D natural, and this chord is called E seven.
Now, to be more [Eb] specific, it's sometimes called dominant seventh. _ _ _
Other than the strange thing that happens in the intro, we have mostly chords from the
key of E.
Well, there's some strange things that happen coming up in just a second here.
So [B] our normal chords in the key of E [A] would be E, A, [B] and B, our three major [E] chords, and
we're going to use all of those in here.
[A] And you might play the A with a hinged bar, if you like, and then play [B] the B [N] here.
You're really going to have to, to make this song work, you're going to have to have good
control of the A family of bars.
Even if you can, even if you have to play it with three fingers, we're going to really
need them in this case because of what happens in the song.
But, so [A] there are three main chords, three major chords in the key of E.
The song opens up with two of the minor chords.
We see G sharp [Abm] minor, barred at the fourth, [Dbm] and C sharp minor, also barred at the fourth.
[Eb] So the G sharp minor is the E minor shape at four, [Ab] and the C sharp minor would be the
[Dbm] A minor [N] shape at four.
But then we're going to see a whole bunch of other generally open chords, Ds and Gs
and Cs, and we also, though, want to be able to play them with, as bars, out of the E family
and the A family.
And that's what's going to be happening a lot in here.
[Ab] There's a really unusual series of [Em] chords that [N] keeps following a very simple to remember
and even see pattern of, if [E] I go from E [A] to A, I'm going from the sixth string open [E] to
the fifth string open as far as the scale goes, E, F sharp, G sharp, A, [A] that's a relationship
of one to four.
E would be one, A would be four. _ _ _ _
Hopefully you followed most of what the last two segments were, but even if you [Bb] didn't,
there's, or if it's not all completely clear yet, you're going to be able to play this song.
So, it opens up with this really interesting _ half-step chromatic [Abm] feel, starting off with
[Ab] a major chord, G sharp, _ G sharp major seven, to G sharp seven, and back to G sharp major [A] seven.
[E] And you kind of hear one guitar do this, or you hear it sometimes in triplets, which is
how I played it [Ab] back at the top.
_ _ _ _ _ Same thing then continues with the minor version of [Abm] that. _ _ _ _
_ _ Then the [Gb] song starts with just our normal [Abm] rock beat. _
_ [Dbm] _ _ _ [A] But getting back to the [Ab] intro quickly, you also don't need to do this with triplets.
You could just strum through it with two beats per each chord.
So I've got it way [Ab] spread out just because those chord names are really long, but it's
just two beats of everything.
G sharp, G sharp major seven, G sharp seven, back to [Abm] major seven. _
_ _ _ _ So it could just be down, down, up on each one of those. _ _ _ _ _ _