Chords for John Mayer - Making of "New Light" for IGTV

[Am] But if [D] you give me just [G] one night,.
you're gonna [C] see me in [Am] a new light.
[D] Yeah, if you give me just [G] one night.
[Em] Portrait mode, huh?.
[Am] So it's gonna be portrait mode now.
Great, fine.
Not my business.
I'm on an off day on [G] the Dead Company tour.
and thought that I would take over.
Electric Lady Studios [Am] for the afternoon.
and take you through [D] the making of my single, New Light.
It's a single that I [G] produced with no ID.
and I thought we'd go into it.
and break it down track by track.
Sort of take you behind the song.
So I got together with no ID back in the spring.
and he would go through his laptop.
and play these chops and samples that he had.
And this loop hit me that he played.
and I sat up and I went, uh-oh, took the guitar.
And this was the loop.
[F#m] [G] .
[Bm] [F#m] [G] .
[D] I went, ooh, [C] that's [F#m] woozy, [G] wavy, and weird.
And I picked up my guitar and it was [D] also.
[F#] open enough harmonically that I could write to it.
[G#m] So I wrote [A] these four chords to it.
[Em] A minor, D, [D] [A] G, [G] [C] .
C.
And [F#m] so we had written this [G] loop.
.
[D] Next thing we did [F#m] was [G] put some drums on it.
after [D] I'd come up with that.
So there's a little [C] bit of guitar [G] here.
if you wanna put that in.
.
That [D] doesn't really define the [G] melodic stuff yet.
But no ID got up and he went to LinnDrum,.
which is this great old vintage drum machine.
[D] You've heard it on [G] Prince Records, Michael Jackson Records,.
tons of records.
.
[C] [A] So this [Em] is what that is.
.
And [D] really all it is is just a kick.
[G] That's a four on the floor, so you get a kick.
underneath the snare as well, which makes it drive.
[D] And then you've got the classic [Em] Linn clap,.
you know, once a bar.
[C] It's like [F#m] [G] the Prince, you got a Prince clap,.
but like, [D] [F#] that's how you do [E] it.
So open-handed Prince clap.
[Am] So this is sort of what I wrote to.
[D] When I had this, [G] I knew I had something.
So I'd go [C] back to my hotel room and I [Am] would just jam out and sing.
[D] [G] It has this kind of thing, you know.
.
You [Em] [Am] know, it was kind of 80s thing.
.
So [D] I knew I [Bm] had something.
We had [G] the vocal, I had some ideas.
Gonna [Am] see me in a new light.
So once I sat there that first night,.
[D] give me just one [G] night.
.
You [C] done it, did it, [Am] done it.
That's kind of all I had, stuff going like that.
[D] So then [G] we got Aaron Sterling to play some [B] drums on it.
And [Am] that's what this is.
[D] [Bm] [G] And that's a live drummer, [C] just the [Am] overheads,.
because you've got to get this drum machine.
to [D] interact with live drums.
And if [G] you've got too [C] much [Am] going on on the drum,.
the live drum section and the program [D] drum section,.
it becomes like popcorn.
[G] So it was really cool to take just the [C] overheads.
from the drums.
[Am] .
And then [D] we got Mr.
Pino [G] Palladino.
.
[Am] .
[D] [G] I put some Lindrum shaker on it.
So [C] every once in a while you hear this thing.
that's [Am] like, like that.
[D] So now you've got [G] like the bed of the tune.
.
[Am] I'm just, I'm just jamming to it [D] for a second.
I'm not even thinking.
[G] .
So then [B] I start putting some guitar on it.
So there's not really any defined guitar chords.
in the song, which for me is such a breath of fresh air.
because it takes the onus off of me.
to make everything happen on the guitar.
It's really fun when you've got everything.
doing a little bit of lifting.
to just play a little guitar on it.
And second verse is kind of a good example.
of what the electric guitar can do with single notes.
to just push something forward.
and make it half melodic and half rhythmic.
[Am] [D] .
[G] It's this guy.
[Am] [F#] [G] .
We're now on the bridge.
Check [D] this out.
[Em] .
[C#m] This guitar [D] part right [G] here is [D] played [G] on Prince's [D] guitar.
And I'm not making that up.
It was an [G] incredible day.
[F#] because we were working on [G] this part of the song.
[D] which was [G] definitely Prince [D]-tastic.
[C] [Em] And the guitar magically came across the table.
in the studio from a friend who,.
it just appeared for an hour.
And we were, we didn't know it was coming.
[G#m] [G] And we were working on this part of the song.
that needed this part.
It was one of the strangest,.
most beautiful, serendipitous moments.
Prince's guitar showed up.
So we sort of like got into the spirit.
of the way Prince would have done it.
We plugged it into an API, put a little compressor on it.
So that's actually, that part of the song is direct input.
It's not even through an amp.
My favorite thing to do is to take like four chord loops.
and cut into them and add a moment here.
and add a moment here, you know?.
So when the first day I had the song,.
it just went around and around and around.
But there's a couple of moments.
where you can put events in that actually,.
for just a one bar, make the song feel like.
it's not looped out.
And there's this moment at the end of the solo.
going into the last chorus.
[D] [E] [Am] .
[G] That's cool.
The other thing I wanna show you is.
when you got a guy like Pino Palladino.
and you got a turnaround like that,.
you just set the dude free and you go, just feel it out.
So here's what Pino does under that turnaround,.
which is just insane.
[D] [E] .
[Am] This one [G] bar makes the last chorus.
feel like you've never heard it before.
It's really, really cool.
And then you've got the background vocals behind it.
[D] [E] [Am] .
[D] And [G] the background vocals are interesting.
because [C] when you background vocal [Am] yourself,.
it [C] can be too much of [F#] the quality of your own voice.
And then it just gets like, well, who's the lead singer.
and where's the background coming from?.
That's maybe three of me, three, [Em] four of me.
flattened out, meaning pitch-wise,.
like real hardcore auto-tune.
because I don't use auto-tune on vocals really.
But you can use auto-tune as an instrument.
And the way we use it as an instrument.
is to turn the vocal into more of a synth part,.
which is where you get.
.
[Am] [D] .
So you get these.
[Em] [D] [E] .
So it [A] feels like me, but it's.
[C] [Am] .
[D] [G] Check [Em] .
[Am] [D] [Bm] .
this out.
[G] [C] .
[Am] [C] [Bm] .
[A] [C] .
[Em] So.
Whatever works, people.
.
So there, I guess we have it of the song, New Light.
It was so much fun to make.
And again, I'm gonna play you New Light.
in the order which we added stuff.
So you will hear during the playing of the song,.
how it came to life chronologically.
[F#m] So.
[G] [D] .
[F#m] [G] [Am] .
[D] [Bm] [G] .
[Am] .
[D] [Bm] [G] .
[C] [Am] .
[D] [G] .
[Em] [Am] .
[D] [G] .
[B] [Am] .
[D] [G] .
♪ [Am] New light, if you [D] give me just one [G] night ♪.
♪ To [C] meet you underneath [Am] the moonlight ♪.
♪ Oh, I wanna [D] take you there ♪.
And there you have it.
♪ I [G] wanna break through with you ♪ New Light.
♪ I [C] wanna know everything [Am] about you ♪.
♪ So [D] I can see you [Bm] in the [G] moonlight ♪.
[N] .