Chords for Man of Constant Sorrow Bluesy Guitar Lesson!

_ [B] _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Gm] _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Howdy, _ _ welcome to BanjoBenClark.com.
That's my signature lick to let you [Ab] know that you're at your home for learning how to play
the banjo, guitar, or mandolin.
I am Banjo Ben.
Each and every week here at BanjoBenClark.com, I teach a banjo, guitar, or mandolin lesson.
I've been doing that for years, which means there's hundreds of videos and tabs up on the site.
If you're watching here on Facebook or on YouTube, in a little while I'll invite you
over to the site where you can view all those lessons and you can watch the close to 30
minute video lesson I have for this song, Man of Constant Sorrow.
I always want to call it, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
But you can also download the tabs, which are in PDF or TEF file form.
And then I have an MP3, a rhythm MP3, _ where you can practice along, as well as four different
speeds of rhythm videos that I play rhythm for you.
I'm going to teach you how to play each and every one of these notes.
And I also have another video where I just play the whole thing through very slowly so
you can see exactly what I'm doing.
All right, so I'll be glad to see you over there at BanjoBenClark.com.
Let's go ahead and get started.
Measure one of Man of Constant Sorrow.
Let's learn this great version of Man of Constant Sorrow in the key of G on guitar.
It'd be [N] real easy for us to just put together a bunch of bluesy licks that fit over these
G, C, and D chords.
But more than that, we want to make bluesy licks that also follow the melody.
We are going to, later on in the solo, we're going to get a little bit more expressive.
_ But here at the start, we want to start pretty [G] close to the melody.
And I've also imported [Abm] some of the ideas and licks from my banjo and mandolin version just
to make it a little bit different.
Pay attention to your pick strokes down there beneath each one of the notes.
You see those little arrows.
Those are important.
In measure one, we're going to start [G] on the second beat with just an open G string.
You'll notice I already have my index finger down the first fret of the B string because
we're going to go there at the end of measure one.
So we play that open G string, and then we're going to do a [Em] little choke on the third fret.
[Ab] And you'll notice I put both of my fingers on the G string.
[Bb] I put my ring finger on that third fret that we want to choke, [Ab] but I also put my middle
finger right behind it, and that's so I can have a little bit more strength in choking it [G] up.
So it sounds like this.
_ _ [C] _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ Okay.
Then when we get into measure two, we're going to bring in some of this mandolin type sound and stuff.
We're going to play _ our middle fingers on the second fret of the first two strings,
and we're going to strum the first three strings though.
So that's what it sounds like.
_ [Gbm] Of course, that [Db] doesn't sound very good, so we're going to resolve it.
We're going to [G] slide both those fingers up to the third fret, so it sounds like this. _ _
_ _ And once you're there, we're going to strum it two more times, down, up.
It's okay if you accidentally [D] catch your D string when you're doing this.
[D] The D string fits in there, but we do [G] want to aim for the first three strings if we can.
Now the third set of notes there are muted.
You'll see how they're kind of grayed out.
What that means is we're going to barely lift these middle two fingers off these strings,
not completely off the strings, just release the pressure so that whenever we play through
them, it sounds [A] like this.
[Abm] Of course, we can't do that to the open strings, [G] so it'll sound like this.
_ _ _ That gives just some percussive type feeling to it.
And then the last bit of that measure, we're going to do another one of the slides. _
So measure two slowly, all together, sounds like this. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ Good.
Now measure three, we're going to play that three more times, and then we're going to
start targeting our B string.
And it's okay if you don't get there right away, but it would be great if it sounded like this.
_ _ Oops, I hit the G string.
_ _ [C] _ _ [G] So that's where we're going.
_ _ [C] And then we end that measure with the slide on the [Bb] G string.
_ [B] So just measures one through three slowly.
[Bb] _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ [C] _ _ [G] Good.
Now we're going to land measure four on the G string, and that's going to be a quarter note.
And then we're going to slide with our ring finger from the third to fifth frets to match
that note on the D string. _
And we're going to play this same note for a long time, right?
Almost a full two measures.
So then we're going to play the open G string three more times.
But then in the very last half [N] beat of measure four, we're going to do a sixteenth note slide.
So this one happens faster than the first slide we have in measure four.
So measure four sounds like this.
_ _ [G] _ _
_ _ See that?
See how fast that second slide happened? _
_ _ _ _ Good.
And then we're going to continue to play the G string measure five four more times.
And then we're going to do a real fast sixteenth [Gb] note pull off.
This is kind of a banjo type move from third fret to second fret.
And I like [D] to pull off going up.
It sounds [A] like this.
_ _ _ Then an [G] open G string, then a third fret, [B] then an open B string.
So measures four [G] and five slowly sound like this. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Gm] _
_ [B] _ _ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _
[Gb] Good.
Now as we get into the C chord, we're going to do a little bit of [Em] cross picking here.
We're going to land on the first fret of the B [C] string.
That's going to be a quarter note.
Go ahead and get in your C position.
Then we're going to reach down and we're going to hammer [D] on the D string from open
[E] to second fret just like our normal C chord is.
Then we're going to go back up to this B string and do a backwards roll. _ _ _
_ And then back up to the B string again.
So measure six slowly [C] sounds like this.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ Then we're going to go back to the D string in measure [E] seven, but then release our index
finger so that we just play [B] our open B string.
Then [G] G, [C] B.
_ _ [E] Okay, so measure [Em] seven slowly sounds like this.
_ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ [Em]
Good.
[Gb] When we get to measure eight, we're going to start off with an eighth note hammer [D] from
second to third fret.
Then we're going to jump down and just grab an open D string just to kind of a space filler.
Then we're going to play a Tony Rice type D lick here. _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Gm] _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [C] _ _