Chords for The Way I Am - Guitar Lesson - Cody Jinks, Merle Haggard, Alan Jackson

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
_ [Bb] _ _ _ [Eb] _ _ Alright, The Way I Am was originally a hit from Earl Haggard back in 1980.
Alan Jackson's done a version and Cody Jinks just put out a version on his last album,
I'm Not the Devil, so we've been dying to get some Cody Jinks on the site.
We're going to take this opportunity to do that and we're going to do his version of
this song, The Way I Am.
His version features this pedal steel kind of throughout the whole song.
We're going to mimic that part all the way through on the electric guitar.
The acoustic guitar's got some strumming all the way through and then we're also going
to pick up those more prominent acoustic guitar riffs that we hear on that recording. _ _ _
_ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Eb] _ _
_ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ [Eb] _ _
_ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Eb] _ _
_ [Db] _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Eb] _ _ [Bb]
The [Eb] way I, the [Ab] way I _ am, don't [Eb] fit my shackles.
The way [Bb] I am, [Eb] reality.
I can almost see that fiber [Ab] dancing.
So [Eb] I'll just dream, [Bb] keep on being the [Eb] way I, _
_ _ [Ab] _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ [Ab] the way I _ am.
Don't [Eb] fit my shackles.
The way [Bb] I am, [Eb] reality.
I can almost see that.
In this tutorial we're going to go over the acoustic guitar part as you see it on the
Jamalong video for this lesson.
We're going to have a capo on the first fret.
We're in standard tuning, so a D chord should sound like this.
[Fm] The song's actually in E flat, so if we put a capo on the first fret we can play key of
D chord shapes.
Let's go over the chords, then we'll go over the introduction which is going to kind of
let us get our fingers on the strumming for this whole [Eb] song.
Okay, so we've got a D chord here, which is open D string, second fret of G, third fret
of B, second fret of high E.
[Ab] We'll have a G chord, _ which is low E string, third fret, second fret, open, open, third
fret of B, third fret of high E.
[Bb] We'll play A7s like this, which is open A string, second fret of D, open G, second fret of B,
open high E.
[Db] That's going to get us through the introduction, but since we're learning chords, let's also
learn what we'll do in the verse, which is a C standard chord, which is just third fret
of the A string, _ [F]
second fret of [Db] D, open G, first fret of B, open high E.
And then right after we hit [Ab] this kind of a C chord, we're going to go to this kind of
a G chord, which is just a more open way to play the G, which is going to set us up for
this riff that we're going to learn later.
So, don't let that throw you off, but you'll see me play Gs like this too, which is just
third fret of low E, mute the A [Eb] string, open [Ab] D, open G, open B, third fret of high E.
_ Alright, so let's learn this introduction, and when we do this, we're going to learn
the main strumming pattern for this whole song, and if you want to skip these riffs,
you can.
You don't have to play the riffs, you can just play the strumming pattern like we're
going to learn it, and just kind of skip over the riffs, but we've created a part here that
will let you do both the strumming and squeeze these riffs in, which are kind of fun.
They lay out really nicely on the acoustic, which we don't get in every song, so we're
going to teach them like we hear [Eb] them on the record.
The introduction starts on this D chord, and for strumming, we're going to do this.
One, two, three, four_
_ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ Intro.
_ [Eb] _ One, two, three, go. _ _
_ [Ab] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Ab] _ _ [Bb] _ And here's verse one with the riffs.
One, [Eb] two, three, go.
Alright, _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _
[Eb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
[F] the main tutorial for the electric guitar is going to be mimicking the pedal
steel riffs that we hear throughout the song.
Once we learn the first introduction, we're just going to be learning some variations
as we progress throughout the song.
We got the bridge solo and then the outro.
We'll also learn some chords that we can play over the verses and the choruses.
We'll do some volume swells for those, which we'll learn at the end.
So we're going to start by just learning this riff and all the variations, and that's the
order it's tabbed out in right beneath the video player at 6stringcountry [C].com. _
[Gm] _ _ _ Alright, so for tone we're going to want a good dose of reverb, a good dose of eighth
note delay.
I've got it on my neck pickup for this one.
A little compression on here, and that's going to get us pretty close.
Alright, so the first riff is this.
[Bb] _
_ _ [F] _ _ [Cm] Alright, so we're really right in that position, five pentatonic box in E flat, starting on
the 11th fret here.
_ Fifth fret of G, fourth fret of [Ab] B.
_ _ Alright, and [Bb] then the only other chord we're going
to need is a B flat triad, which is just two up from the A flat.
So that's eight, seven, [F] six.
[Eb] Alright, so let's go through a verse.
We're going to swell in on this E flat.
Alright, one, two, three, four.
One, two, three, [Db] four.
One, two, [Ab] three, four.
One, two, [Eb] three, four.
E flat, two, three, [Abm] four.
One, two, three, four.
One, [F] go. _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ [F] _ _ [E] _
_ _ _ [Bb] _ [C] Bridge solo.
One, two, three, four.
One, go.
_ [G] _ _ _ [Ab] _
_ _ [Eb] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Eb] _ _
[Ab] The way I am, don't fit [Eb] my shackles.