Human Nature

Human Nature is an intricate song combining a great groove, bubble picking technique and beautiful chords in the background, which makes it a perfect song to understand what makes Michael Jackson’s tracks so unique.

The intro

We can play this intro in multiple ways, but the chords we’re going to need are Gadd9, A, FMaj7, Emin7.

On top of that, Steve Lukather’s playing is based around shape 4 of the D major scale. The idea is to almost suggest a D major open chord to start with, and hammer-on to the fourth fret of the G string.

Then, we’ve got a little up and down slide to play. We can either play it on shape 4 again, on the B string between the 3rd and the 5th frets, or on shape 1, between frets 7 and 9 on the G string!

The verse

As we get to the verse, the chords part simplifies a lot, and Steve Lukather’s part comes alive! The chords alternate between G and A six times. On the seventh time, we’re switching to G, F#min, Emin and A.

Steve Lukather’s part is played over shape 4 of the D major scale again, using a very cool bubble technique to play a 16th note picking groove.

We start with just two notes on the G string:

The idea is to keep the right hand picking down and up on the 16th notes, and fit the right notes onto the right movements, rather than following a tab and breaking the groove apart!

Once you’ve got that groove down, we can start looking at the rest of this cool guitar part. The second bar has an extra note, which is the 7th of the D major scale.

In the fourth bar, we have another little variation with a nice slide on the D string.

The very last part of this verse is a descending melody using the same shape again, with a few more touches of the full major scale!

The chorus

In the chorus, just like in the verse, we have a chord progression and Steve Lukather’s part to look at! Let’s start with the chords so we understand the context. We’re going to play GMaj7, A, D, D/C#, Bmin and Bmin/A (or A!). We then have the same thing again with GMaj7 and A, but this time followed by an Emin.

Steve Lukather is then highlighting the chords by targeting specific “smaller” shapes within GMaj7 and A.

We then move on to the magical part of Lukather’s descending line, mirroring the vocals, again using shape 4 of the D major scale. Try to hold on to a couple of strings as you’re playing this descending line to give this melody a fuller sound!

The last part of the chorus has this very syncopated descending line played over the E minor chord. Here again, just like what we’ve seen on the verse, make sure your right hand is playing ups and downs, and that you’re fitting the note onto the right movement!

The bridge

The last thing to talk about is the little bridge, where we basically repeat the last melody of the chorus a couple of times, before moving up to a little turnaround played over Emin and A!

In conclusion

Human Nature is an intricate song to play, but the more songs like this you learn, the more comfortable you’ll be with bubble picking parts or other Michael Jackson songs!