Chords for My God by Jethro Tull - Guitar Lesson Preview

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_ One of the coolest and most distinctive intros ever.
[N] _ _ This is a tune, this is of course My God by Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson from their fourth album Aqualung.
The beginning of the second side kind of kicked it off.
It was the, _ well this album got accused of being a concept album of course.
Part of it was because each side had a name.
There was the Aqualung side with a bunch of acoustic tunes and there was My God, the [C] second
side which opened up with _ _ just [C] this really cool acoustic guitar part.
Now there's a lot of improvising going on in what happened here and what we're going
to do in this lesson is talk about some of the things you have to be able to do.
[B] One of them is keep a steady, Ian Anderson is really good [G#] with a flat pick.
He can do some really [A] fast stuff and it comes out really clean.
Now, live versions of this, they all come out a little bit differently but I'm going
to break down pretty much note for note the way he played it on the studio album and I
have tabbed, thanks to Songy Surgeon by the way, which [C#] I don't mention too often, but
it's a great program for slowing stuff [G#] down and really analyzing what's going on.
But you could really get started [G] with this by getting going, we need some [A] A's. _ _
[C] Pairs of A's, an octave [A] apart, the low A and the A on the fourth string, seventh fret.
_ [F#] And in the beginning he just keeps them going for what appear to be a random number of times.
I went to Great Lakes and encountered every [F] one and who really cares.
The important thing is he gets it rolling [F#] in cycles of [A] three, one, [Am] two, three, and the
third one would be a hammer on from G [A] to A. _ _
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_ _ And it keeps speeding up. _ _
_ _ _ Then there's this cool arpeggio _
_ _ _ _ _ [B] [A] and he starts it again _ _ _ with a set of four or a few sets
of four, _ _ breaking into sets of three _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ and speeding up until a _ _ _ _ second little [N] arpeggio.
_ _ Then, I guess I'm going to give you the whole intro right here but in the rest of the song,
one of the things that's really cool about this song that actually puzzled me about it
for until recently, for many years, I never really bothered to count out the timing of
_ what all is happening.
And it is tricky.
[A] So we're going to go a lot in depth into the counting every measure very carefully and
making sure that you get the right notes in there.
Now what happens after that in [Am] the intro is just a short little A minor scale.
_ [F] _ _ [E] Skipping the G on the way up and then sliding [F#] up _ to a G and a B [A]
that
[F#] Anyhow, so hopefully you got all that.
That's what happens in the intro and then the main little [A] vamp starts.
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[A] _ _ _ [Am] _ _ [B] _ _ [F] _
_ [A] _ _ _ [Am] _ [Em] So that's what we're going to be talking in here.
We'll also talk very little, [A] well maybe not, but we may get to the _
[E] _ _ [D#] _ _ _ [C] _ [E] _ _
_ [D#] _ _ There's the electric [B] riff that comes in later.
And that's about all we're going to talk about in this lesson.
It's about the first minute and a [A] half or so when we have the acoustic guitar playing.
Not going to worry about vocals or anything but we will [D] talk about the strumming stuff.
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And what's happening in there also a place where we have to count very carefully.
[N] So, coming up, a lesson on my God. _ _ _ _ _ _ _