Why Georgia Guitar Lesson

If you’ve ever picked up an acoustic guitar and wondered how to turn simple chords into something that feels like a conversation, John Mayer’s 'Why Georgia' is a masterclass in exactly that.

As you'd probably expect from John Mayer - this track is no walk in the park. It's full of lovely chord voicings, and of course, a challenge for the right-hand! Thomas has provided us with a fantastic video lesson, outlining every detail of the track for you to learn along with! This write-up will help as a visual aid, letting you learn each section at your own pace.

If you've read any of our other lesson write-ups, you'll be aware that there won't be any tabs provided. Thomas does an excellent job of meticulously going over every phrase and note with detail, so please be sure to use the video as your main reference!

Intro/Verse 1

The track starts with an intro that doubles up as a verse once the vocals kick-in. The good news? We only have to learn three relatively simple chords. The not-so good news? The embellishments played over the chords are quite challenging, with one requiring quite a big stretch… But that shouldn't deter you, as with just a bit of practice it'll become second nature! Let's take a closer look:

Please be sure to watch the video for the picking pattern that Thomas is using for each chord, as well as the embellishments used. As there are plenty more chords that we're going to learn in this lesson, we're not going to hyper-analyse every chord voicing created by the embellishments.

Before we take a look at the structure for this section, I want to spend a bit of time on that pesky Cmaj9 chord. Because of the embellishments used over this chord, we need to catch it in a relatively irregular way - use your first finger to barre across the second fret. This might make the stretch to the 5th fret of the D-string quite uncomfortable, and I think it's important we quickly talk about wrist health.

Your body is pretty good at knowing when something is wrong - so please only ever play into slight discomfort, never pain. Let's identify a few mistakes that could be risking wrist health:

Your wrist is bent at quite a severe angle. This is probably the most obvious sign that you need to change your approach, or slowly work on your stretching.

Your fingers are all flat against the fretboard. Our fingers want to remain as arched as possible (with the exception of the barre) on each fret. Not only will this help you stretch further, it will let your wrist sit in a more ergonomic position, and just make everything more comfortable!

Your elbow is really digging into your side, or lifted up too high. This is another habit that forces your wrist into awkward positions. It's absolutely fine to slightly move your elbow towards or away from you - it's natural. But moving too far in either direction is detrimental to your playing and comfort. To find the best ergonomic position, try this: touch your left shoulder with your left hand, let your arm fall with the palm face-up. Then bring your arm back to playing position - this should feel natural and comfortable.

If you're not doing any of these bad habits, I have three suggestions to make this chord a bit more comfortable. Firstly, move your thumb around and check if it puts your hand in a more comfortable position.

Secondly, push your wrist slightly away from you/the guitar. I find that this helps me keep my fingers arched, and minimises any uncomfortable angles in the wrist.

The third tip is to take a slightly more diagonal (pointing towards the body of the guitar) approach in your fretting hand. Even though it might feel like you're pulling further away from the fret you're trying to reach, it will help you stay at a more comfortable and accessible angle.

With that all said, let's quickly take a look at how Thomas is approaching the fingerpicking side of things. Thomas is using a technique called Travis-picking. This technique sees that the thumb alternates between bass notes (usually on the lower strings) while the fingers pluck melody or harmony notes on the higher strings.

It's not just your thumb that wants to alternate between strings - your fingers will also move around depending on what the chord shape is. Thomas mostly uses just his first and second finger, but occasionally introduces his third finger when he wants to pluck a full chord. Here's a quick exercise to help you practice this technique:

Before we move on to the pre-chorus, let's take a look at the structure of the verse:

Pre-chorus

Having fun with Travis-picking? Well, I'm glad, but we're going want to strum this next section! You could grab your pick, but I challenge you to use your fingers to strum for the rest of the track! If you haven't done this before, it can feel a bit awkward. If so, I recommend that you use just your first finger to strum - this will keep the sound cleaner, and give you more control over each motion. We'll get into the specific strumming pattern in just a moment!

Before we do, let's take a look at the various chords we need for this section. You might be pleased to know that they're a bit more straight-forward this time round, and we don't need to worry about tricky embellishments in uncomfortable positions!

If you've watched John Mayer play before, you might have noticed that he likes to use his thumb to play the bass notes on the low E-string. Though there are a handful of chord shapes that require you to use your thumb, it's mostly a matter of preference.

For example, the F# (2nd fret on the E-string) in the D/F# chord can be played using either your thumb or your first finger - you might just have to shuffle your fingers around a bit! This will continue to be true for a few more chords coming up in the next couple of sections.

Another piece of good news is that we want to use the same strumming pattern over each chord!

Once you feel comfortable with all the chord shapes and the strumming pattern, practice putting them all together. If you're struggling with any chords in particular, try isolating two chords at a time. This will help you develop the muscle memory needed to swap between chords with ease!

Chorus

The chorus takes things up a notch - in dynamics as well as complexity. Though we're only adding one new chord - well, two if you count the embellishment - the difficulty lies in the strumming patterns. Yes, patterns, plural. But before we get to the strumming patterns, let's look at the newly added chords as well as the structure for the chorus.

I've colour-coded the structure above to help differentiate between the two strumming patterns. The patterns tend to change every bar, but it can quickly become confusing as we're not always just playing one chord per bar. This can be seen in the first bar, as we're playing the first strumming pattern for just half of the bar.

The second strumming pattern happens to be exactly the same as the strumming pattern used in the pre-chorus.

The first bar is the most awkward part of the section, as we're not only using two different strumming patterns, but we're also pushing the rhythm. This means that we're introducing the G chord slightly before the end of the first bar - check out the video to see the exact timing!

Variations to the verse

The chorus takes us straight back into a verse, but not a strict repeat from the previous verse we've just learned! In fact, this is slightly easier, as we're continuing to strum rather than worry about Travis-picking!

The embellishments and timing of the main groove using G and D remains exactly the same, just using a strumming pattern instead. I believe the easiest and most efficient way to tackle the change in the right-hand is by making sure that you're confident in the timing of the embellishments. This will reduce any extra mental acrobatics you'll have to do to sync the strumming pattern up with the embellishments.

The good news continues as we no longer need to make the uncomfortable stretch to the 5th fret of the D string over the Cmaj9 chord! Be sure to watch the video for how the timing is affected by this, and how Thomas embellishes this chord. Here's the strumming pattern used for this change:

Break

This is the very short little section that smoothly leads us into the bridge. Using only down-strums, we're going to play through a new voicing of G major, as well as Gmaj7.

Bridge

Let's break the bridge into three sections, as there are quite a few new chord shapes! We'll call the first part 'stretches' the second 'open chords', and the third will be the 'descent' - you'll see why very soon!

Stretches

We're introducing a new shape - a variation of a sus2 - that makes us catch yet another uncomfortable stretch. The one saving grace is that this first half of the bridge uses the same exact shape, just starting on four different frets.

If the stretch is just too much, use a power-chord shape in it's place (simply lower your pinky down by two frets). Regardless of which shape you've chosen to play, make sure that you're playing softly with a gentle palm-mute, using the first strumming pattern of the chorus.

Open chords

Using the exact same strumming pattern that we've just looked at, we're going to be playing chords that we've already seen in this order:

The other big difference here is the lift in volume and dynamics. Stop palm-muting and give each strum some gusto to get good volume from your guitar!

Descent

The final part of the bridge is going to test our stamina, as we're going to be playing a handful of barre chord shapes.

Using a pushed rhythm, we want to strum each chord just once with a down-stroke.

Final pre-chorus

We just have two very small changes to look at for the final pre-chorus and chorus, and then you have everything you need to know to play along with the track!

The one small change in the last pre-chorus is simply that we play another bar of Asus4 at the end of the phrase. This is quite a popular thing to do towards the end of the song, as it's a great tool to add tension.

Final chorus

The very, very last adjustment to make is yet another extension. In the previous choruses, we play the F chord (with the embellishment to Fsus2) for just one bar before transitioning to a C. However, we need to play the F chord for three bars for the final chorus, again transitioning into a C.

And just for good measure, here's the structure for the entire track: