Check out this free lesson from Guitar Control featuring one of our most popular instructors Jon MacLennan. This time Jon is going to show you How To Play The Joker by The Steve Miller Band with free tabs and step by step video instruction.
Introduction
Hey how’s it going? This is Jon McLennan and I hope you’re doing fantastic and welcome to this video lesson, thanks for checking it out. I’m here with GuitarControl.com today and we’ve got a great lesson up for you called the Joker by Steve Miller Band and it’s a classic song. I’ve played The Joker a million times on cover gigs and it’s a crowd pleaser and it’s a good one to know. So I’m going to teach you how to play the whole song so be sure to click the link below so you can get the tab that goes along with this video lesson and that’ll help you out as we zoom in and break it down; all right well let’s check out How To Play The Joker by The Steve Miller Band.
The Joker
The Joker by The Steve Miller Band comes right in on the verse and it’s based off of three chords; an F barre chord, a B flat and a C. So those are the underlying changes and this riff goes through them; so let me break that down for you.
I’m gonna start with my first finger on the first fret the base note of that F barre chord and I’m gonna play it twice and then I’m gonna move up to the third fret, same string, and then open fifth string and then up to the root note of that B flat chord, which is the first fret of the fifth string; so far I’ve got two note – plucks on F and then walking up the scale – two notes on B flat. Okay now I’m gonna walk up the scale again to the note C, which is at the third fret, then play open fourth string and then back to the note C which is the bass note there of this chord…
Okay let’s do that together three four… nice again three four, one more time… Then we add this to it, which is a nice group of sixteenth notes. So we’re gonna start on this third fret sixth string then move to the fifth string and play zero and four ones here two zeros then 3-0 on the sixth string; so again so that’s a pickup there too and and then that is the beginning of the riff again… and back down.
So on those sixteenth notes I recommend down I’m down up with the right hand is that helps you get the speed little tough to do and it sounds a little manic when I put it all on down stroke, it’s a little bit more laid-back feel the way the recording is it’s pretty laid-back; so let’s practice the first measure a few times and then we’ll practice the second measure a few times and then we’ll try and put it together and this is a great way to practice, just you know bar by bar, again if you’re having trouble click the link below so you can get the tab for How To Play The Joker by The Steve Miller Band.
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