
A step-by-step guide to unlocking some of John Mayer's signature acoustic guitar techniques.
Intermediate
Beginner
- Learn to add percussive drum-like sounds to your playing.
- Combine folk and modern fingerstyle techniques together for a full-band sound.
- Blend classic rhythm and blues guitar styles with pop sensibilities.
John Mayer's acoustic guitar techniques have wowed audiences ever since he first arrived on the music scene. From his unshakeable groove and tough chord stretches to the unique combinations of techniques in his strumming hand, Mayer has challenged the guitar community with a whole new vocabulary for rhythm guitar.
Just check out any YouTube video of Mayer playing live, or listen to songs like "Stop This Train," "Neon," "Queen of California," or "Something Like Olivia" and you'll get an idea of how uniquely he blends elements of folk, R&B, jam band, and pop into his guitar style.
John Mayer - Neon (Live In LA - 1080p)
On top of all of this, he delivers fantastic vocals, masterful lyrics, and great songwriting. Mayer has led the way for a new generation of players, demonstrating how artists can get a full sound performing with just a guitar and vocal.
Regardless of playing level, spending time working out Mayer's signature acoustic techniques is a valuable study. We'll start with a simple breakdown of easier, bite-sized exercises, and then build out into more advanced examples combining multiple elements together. The final goal is to show you how to unlock some of these sounds and add them into your own guitar style. And if you're an electric player, you can still benefit from this lesson, because Mayer uses a lot of these techniques in his electric guitar style as well, albeit with a slightly different approach.
Ex. 1 starts off with an isolated thumb slap. This is a sound you'll hear in many of Mayer's hit songs. Use your thumb to slap the strings with your strumming hand. A percussive drum-like effect is created as the strings are pushed down into the frets of your guitar. The power comes from turning your wrist into the guitar, towards your body. You want to rotate your hand like you would turn a key. The thumb should stay parallel to the strings, and typically makes contact just above the knuckle. This slap is most often played on beats 2 and 4 for pop songs in a 4/4 time signature. Using this technique creates a backbeat type of groove that will give you the feel and vibe of playing with a drummer even when you are playing alone. First, let's try just an isolated thumb slap technique on beats 2, and 4 while counting out loud.
Ex. 1
Now that you've got the backbeat thumb slap, let's expand on this technique by mixing in some folky fingerstyle. Ex. 2 blends some fingerstyle playing while still maintaining the backbeat thumb slap over a Dsus2 chord shape.
Ex. 2
Once the thumb slap is starting to feel comfortable, try bringing in an index finger brush as well. Ex. 3 demonstrates the same thumb-slap technique, but as that is happening, you'll simultaneously brush down with the fingernail on your index finger. This sounds like a combination of a guitarist strumming a chord and a drummer hitting the snare drum.
Ex. 3
This exact technique can be heard on songs like "Who Says," "Heart of Life," and "Stop This Train." It's also important to note that Mayer typically plays this groove with only his thumb and index finger on the strumming hand. Although the overall pattern may seem complicated at first, it's best to simplify it and play with just two fingers, to keep it as straightforward as possible.
John Mayer - Stop This Train - Hollywood Casino - Tinley Park, IL - September 2, 2017 LIVE
Adding Embellishments
Mayer will often add specific embellishments to chords using hammer-ons and pull-offs. Ex. 4 shows the use of a hammer-on from the open 2nd string to the 3rd fret on the downbeat. This is the 6 of the chord hammering into the root note of the Dsus2 chord shape.
Ex. 4
Ex. 5 demonstrates the use of pull-offs and hammer-ons over some of Mayer's go-to acoustic guitar chord shapes. Once you start seeing which chord tones Mayer typically does embellishments on, you'll be able to add these techniques into your own progressions.
Ex. 5
Little melodic embellishments of the chord shapes are a great way to keep interest in your accompaniment guitar part, either lightly underneath a vocal, or more pronounced and featured when playing instrumental interludes between verses. It's also important to note that Mayer would typically use his fretting-hand thumb to play the bass notes on the 6th string, like in the Gm(maj7) chord shape.
Another common technique Mayer uses is demonstrated in Ex. 6. Mayer uses his thumb to rake strings 4, 3, and 2, then the 1st string is played with an index finger pluck.
Ex. 6
This could either be used as an embellishment in the middle of a progression or on a final ending chord like in Ex. 7.
Ex. 7
Next let's look at Ex. 8. It demonstrates another way that Mayer would use the thumb-slap technique, but this time it's blended with more R&B chords. When Mayer uses this technique, he'll typically involve three or four fingers in the strumming hand. Here, you'll pluck all the strings together, which will make your guitar sound more like a piano. He goes beyond just the thumb slapping the strings. His whole hand drops on the strings to make sure he's keeping the back beat slap going on 2 and 4.
Ex. 8
Acoustic With a Flatpick
While Mayer plays a lot of his acoustic repertoire without a pick, many tunes require a flatpick.
Ex. 9 and Ex. 10 demonstrate how Mayer riffs off chords and uses very common rhythm and blues progressions in his music. In Ex. 9, the G bass note on the 6th string is played with the fretting-hand thumb. Also, all of the notes on the 6th string are played with a light palm mute. Ex. 10 really shows how his guitar style is rooted in listening to players like Curtis Mayfield, Jimi Hendrix, and Steve Cropper, to name a few.
Ex. 9
Ex. 10
Whether you learn all of these techniques, or you just take one idea and add it to your guitar playing, this will immediately start to level up your guitar skills. The techniques presented are really just scratching the surface of Mayer's style, each one will prove valuable, especially when accompanying singers.
The country virtuoso closes out this season of Wong Notes with a fascinating, career-spanning interview.
We’ve saved one of the best for last: Brad Paisley.The celebrated shredder and seasoned fisherman joins host Cory Wong for one of this season’s most interesting episodes. Paisley talks his earliest guitar-playing influences, which came from his grandfather’s love of country music, and his first days in Nashville—as a student at Belmont University, studying the music industry.
The behind-the-curtain knowledge he picked up at Belmont made him a good match for industry suits trying to force bad contracts on him.
Wong and Paisley swap notes on fishing and a mutual love of Phish—Paisley envies the jam-band scene, which he thinks has more leeway in live contexts than country. And with a new signature Fender Telecaster hitting the market in a rare blue paisley finish, Paisley discusses his iconic namesake pattern—which some might describe as “hippie puke”—and its surprising origin with Elvis’ guitarist James Burton.
Plus, hear how Paisley assembled his rig over the years, the state of shredding on mainstream radio, when it might be good to hallucinogenic drugs in a set, and the only negative thing about country-music audiences.
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, he’s championed sustainability and environmental causes—and he wants to tell you about it.
As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, it’s clear that the preservation of the Earth’s forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. You’ll know just how big of a statement that is if you’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest you’ll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A beautifully realized mashup of two iconic guitars.
Reader: Ward Powell
Hometown: Ontario, Canada
Guitar: ES-339 Junior
I’ve always liked unusual guitars. I think it started when I got my first guitar way back in 1976. I bought a '73 Telecaster Deluxe for $200 with money I saved from delivering newspapers.
I really got serious about playing in 1978, the same year the first Van Halen album was released. Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on me, including how he built and modded guitars. Inspired by Eddie, I basically butchered that Tele. But keep in mind, there was once a time when every vintage guitar was just a used guitar—I still have that Tele, by the way.
I never lost that spirit of wanting guitars that were unique, and have built and modded a few dozen guitars since. When I started G.A.S.-ing simultaneously for a Les Paul Junior and a Casino, I came up with this concept. I found an Epiphone ES-339 locally at a great price. It already had upgraded CTS pots, Kluson tuners, and the frets had been PLEK’d. It even came with a hardshell case. It was cheap because it was a right-handed guitar that had been converted to left handed and all the controls had been moved to the opposite side, so it had five additional holes in the top.
Fortunately, I found a Duesenberg wraparound bridge that used the same post spacing as a Tune-o-matic. I used plug cutters to cut plugs out of baltic birch plywood to fill the 12 holes in the laminated top. I also reshaped the old-style Epiphone headstock. Then, I sanded off the original finish, taped the fretboard, and sprayed the finish using cans of nitro lacquer from Oxford Guitar Supply. Lots of wet sanding and buffing later, the finish was done.
I installed threaded insert bushings for the bridge, so it will never pull out. The pickup is a Mojotone Quiet Coil P-90 and I fabricated a shim from a DIY mold and tinted epoxy to raise the P-90 up closer to the strings. The shim also covers the original humbucker opening. I cut a pickguard out of a blank and heated it slightly to bend it to follow the curvature of the top.
All in all, I'm pretty happy how it turned out! It plays great and sounds even better. And I have something that is unique: an ES-339 Junior.
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