James Taylor Lessons

If there was any doubt that the Internet is an amazing place, let me present James Taylor guitar lessons - by James Taylor!

I like James Taylor a lot. He's too soft and mellow for some people, and I understand that. I don't want a steady diet of only James either. And his songs are *so* ubiquitous that I know some people have had enough - and I get that too. But I do like him - I like his songs, I like his voice, and I *love* his acoustic guitar playing.

Sitting down and trying to figure out what he's doing on songs like "Fire and Rain", "Carolina in my Mind", "Country Road", and "Something in the Way She Moves" is daunting. He's not just strumming chords - there are chord fragments mixed with some pretty fancy fingerpicking.

I've blogged before that "Something in the Way She Moves" is one of my all-time favorite songs, and one that I've been working on for a while. I basically understand what he's doing, and it's not conceptually that complicated - but it's tricky and damned difficult to play at speed. The thought of being able to play that so easily that you could go out every night in front of thousands of people and play it - oh, and by the way, sing the song at the same time - is boggling to me.

Anyway, that's a long intro to the fact that I just discovered that he's posted some guitar lessons for his songs. There's not a lot of explanation, but there's a very clear video of both his left and right hands. Very very cool.

You hear stories of some musicians who regard how they play their songs as a trade secret, and very much do not want anyone giving away their secrets, let alone putting tutorial videos on their own web site. Kudos to James Taylor.