Miss You

Miss You feels very much like a jam, with a couple of key sections that we'll cover, but the structure does feel a bit floaty, making this song a great opportunity for you to practice difference chord voicings , strumming patterns and lead ideas.

The verse

There are two main chords in this song, A minor and D minor 7. Both are played using barre chords, but we are going to work on simplified voicings too so even if you're new to barre chords you can play this one! Here are the basic barre chord shapes:

And the basic progression is to play each chord for two bars like this:

If you are comfortable playing the barre chord shapes you are basically all set! But read on as we now want to introduce a new voicing for that Am chord. It's based around that barre chord shape, but we are simply not playing the low two strings. This also makes the transition to Dm7 much more straightforward. Here's that voicing for you:

Rhythm

Pattern 1

This first pattern leaves a lot of space and gives a nice offbeat kind of sound on the A minor, before going straight on the Dm7. We can also think about the muting of the chords, not just strumming them. You can do this by relaxing the pressure on your fretting hand. Here's the pattern for you to try:

Pattern 2

This pattern build up the energy by doing choppy downstrokes on every beat for the A minor. And then relaxing things on the Dm7 by going back to the one strum per bar. In this pattern the muting is really important, try to stop the strings ringing out after each strum of the Am to give it that high energy, choppy feel. You can do this by relaxing the pressure on the strings from your fretting hand, and by holding the strings with your strumming hand.

Pattern 2 variation

This is a variation on the second pattern, keeping the energy up and giving us a bit more to do on that Dm7. We're also slightly varying the voicing of that Dm7 chord to change things up even more. Here's that new voicing:

The strumming pattern jumps up into 16th notes for the Dm7 too, giving us something that really sounds more like a funk pattern!

Pattern 3

This option has a really nice phrase on the Dm7. It's a pattern that works really well with that Am7 barre chord shape and you'll hear it in many other songs. Check out Long Train Runnin' for another good example of this idea! The idea is to start with just the barre on the 5th fret and strum those strings, then hammer on the other two fingers for the Dm7 barre chord shape. Take some time to practice this before trying to put it into the strumming pattern. Focus on having those hammered notes ring out clearly without muting the barred notes. Here's a diagram of what we're doing:

Once you are comfortable with that idea you can put it into the pattern from the song. Remember this phrase is really built around that particular barre chord shape, so feel free to try it whenever you're on that shape!

Chorus

The chorus gives us a longer chord progression to work with. We're just using barre chords here and playing this progression:

Here are the shapes we're using to play these chords:

The lead

As always when playing lead (or playing a song in general) it's important to know the key. This song is in A minor and a very good starting point is A minor pentatonic Box 1:

Main theme

The main theme sits entirely in that box 1, just using the notes on the two middle strings. It's a great example of a call and response on the guitar, using only four notes! Remember to add in some vibrato to make it sing, and don't miss that 1/4 bend.

Lick 1

This is a nice alternate ending to the main theme and uses a chromatic double stop idea that ends by outlining the Dm7 chord.

Lick 2

This is a two for the price of one lick! We're playing the same notes as in lick 1, but instead of playing double stops we're picking the notes individually. It's such a clever idea that relates back to what we've already heard, while remaining unique with its own sound. That's something for any lead player to use!

Lick 3

This is a great lick that links together boxes 1, 2 and 5 of the A minor pentatonic using some nice position shift slides. Don't just learn this lick by numbers, make sure you know the boxes you're in as you're playing so you can learn from it as well as learning it! Here's the scale across the neck, and don't forget to use the scales tool in the toolbox to isolate the shapes.

When it comes to knowing where to play these licks, you actually have a lot of freedom. Often a good consideration is to leave space for the other instruments but even that rule doesn't always apply as you can hear them played in this song alongside Mick Jagger's singing. So, use your freedom to experiment and really listen to what you're playing, and how it sounds within the track.

Conclusion

This is a great song for jamming as it's so loose with the structure. If you're playing with friends make sure you're looking at people to know when the next section is coming up, and have fun!