So kiss me and smile for me Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
That's so high for my voice. It's time to learn Leaving on a Jet Plane by John Denver.
He actually wrote the song. It was made famous originally by Peter Paul and Mary but then
John Denver took it back and ran with it as well. He actually, I understand, the first
time he recorded it he didn't expect it to be for public distribution but some people
got a hold of it, they liked it and then the rest is history. So this is originally in
the key of G and that's what I'm going to teach it to you in. It’s really hard for
me to sing it in that key. It's either way too high or too low but let's go with it for
two reasons. One is because I want you to be able to play along with some of the YouTube
videos or recorded tracks and it's a great chord progression for beginners. It uses a
G C and A D chord which the way I teach it are good beginner chords and I'll show you
more about that. Now if you want to sing along and that's really difficult for you as well
it probably is for a lot of guys. I would recommend changing the key and I'm going to
talk about that. You could do a capo or actually change the chords but let's get into that
later.
Let's do it in the original key G three chords, the G chord. I'm going to use that four finger
G, the C chord and I'm gonna use this four finger C chord. A lot of beginners find this
easier than the folk style C but if you know that and you want to use that, that's fine
really and then the D chord. You'll notice that the transitions are pretty easy going
from the G to the C is just moving two fingers and then when I move to the D I just have
to take the pinky off and leave that third finger right where it is. It provides an anchor
so you can do a lot of songs with these three chords.
Okay I say the first thing we do here is just kind of map out the basic chord progression.
It's pretty simple. First of all, there's no quick changes and it does the same progression
over and over and over both in the verse and the chorus, not many songs like that which
is why it makes a great beginner song.
I want to talk out the progression and then we'll do it together so you can see the pattern.
It's where we’re playing one bar G and one bar of C. Now you do that three times G C
G C GC then two bars of D then you repeat that whole thing over and over and over. You
do that twice for a verse and you do it twice for a chorus then for the next verse you do
it twice and so on and so on.
Let's map out the chords with the basic words from the verse okay and just follow along
for now. Don't worry about any strumming. As a matter of fact, let's do one strum per
bar just like that. I'll show you what I mean. Go ahead and make your G chord or whatever
G you want to make. Here we go. I'll start singing low.
All my bags are packed I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door - it’s really low.
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
So you get the idea. Let's try it again
All my bags are packed I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
So that was that progression. We're gonna do it again. The second half of the verse
But the dawn is breakin' It's early morn
The taxi's waitin' He's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die
So that was the second time around. We're going to go on to the chorus just so you can
see how the same progression fits. Here we go. Ready, play.
So kiss me and smile for me Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
That's half of the chorus. Here we go again - G.
I'm leaving to C
on a jet plane back to G
Don’t know when C I’ll be back again G
Oh babe, I hate to and going to D two bars
so that's the whole song. I recommend you start with just one strum per chord just like
we just did then the next step would be strum one per beat. I'll show you how that goes
All my bags are packed I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
Two bars of D
but the dawn is breaking
going to C - it's early morn
Back to G C G C to D
and then the chorus
That was half the chorus. Here we go again. Back to G now
I’m leaving - C On a jet plane
Don’t know when - C I’ll be back again - G
C I hate to D
Good. Okay. And so on. Of course it repeats the exact same chord progression for every
chorus and every verse.
Now let's try adding a strum to that. That would be the next step and I'm going to use
what I call a pop rock strum. It's a fairly common strum that you can use for lots of
folk pop type songs. I originally got it learning Eagle’s songs.
So we're gonna go like this down down up skip up down up. That's actually four beats one
measure. I'll count it out one two and three that’s a skip and four and one two and three
and four and. Now if this is awkward I’d encourage you to just work on the song with
straight down strums and then work on the strum separate and then put them together.
It's really hard to be fumbling with a strum and fumbling with the words trying to remember
the chord change all at one time and then saying “Oh I can't do this” Yes, it's
too much. Break it down. So let's just try the strum together. Matter of fact, no chord
for now. Let's do the strum.
We're going to go one two and skip and four and. As a matter of fact, I'm not going to
use numbers yet. I'm just going to go down down up skip up down up. That seems to work
best for most students. The numbers add an intellectual thing that kind of sometimes
can be a little distracting. Here we go, together one two ready start down down up skip up down
up down down up skip up down up.
Okay so I know that was quick but you can practice it and if you're a part of my Real
Guitar Success program this is a strum that's built into the program so you've already learned
it or you're going to get to it in the beginner's journey.
Let's do it with a chord. This is the next step before we start changing chords. Ready,
hit it - G down up skip up down. Again down down up skip up down up and on the C chord
just for practice. Here we go. Ready, go. Down down up skip up down up. Down down up
skip up down up.
Okay now let's try mapping out the verse with this strum just see what this sounds like.
If you're not ready yet to add the strum just go along with me doing a straight down strum
even one strum per bar. Here we go
All my - it starts on bags, right?
All my - here we go
All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go
back to G standin’ here and C
outside the door and G back to C going to D, back to G.
The dawn is breaking its - C morn G
The taxi’s waiting - back to C he’s blowing his horn
Already I’m so C - I could to D and on to the chorus
So kiss me and smile for me Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Back to G going to D
And one more time
I'm leaving - to C G
don't know
back to C two more G
C going to D two bars of D
Good job. Okay, as I promised I want to deal with the key and how it fits with your voice.
There's a couple of ways you can do this.
First of all, you can put the capo on, raise it up then basically you sing it low but it
won't be as low as it originally was. I might try something like let's put the capo on the
fourth fret. Now my guess is B. It's still a little low for my voice but it's going to
be a lot better then you play the same chords.Can you guess what key we're in now? If we were
in G originally we went up one two three four frets two whole steps. If we were in G we
went up one step to A and one more step to B so this is actually a B chord but you don't
need to worry about that you just play the G form, the C form to D. So now I'd sing it.
I drop the whole thing down.
All my bags are packed I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door I hate and so on ...
It's still a little low for my voice but it's better than trying to sing it really high.
Another way I would do this is actually this is what I would actually do is I would change
the chords around and this is a good song to practice your changing chords to change
keys.
If we're in the key of G here I would probably change this over to the key of E for my voice
that would be G A B C D E quite a bit different than the G so you couldn't do that with a
capo without putting it way up here. So the chords would be G A and B7. In other words
I'd play an E chord in place of a G an A chord in place of a C and a B7 in place of that
D. And I'm going to play a B7 instead of a B because B is a bar chord and I'm gonna not
worry about a bar chord and it works. Let's try it
All my bags are packed I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
Yeah that's much better. I think I would raise it up just a little bit and I put the capo
right there, keep it in the key of E and we're good to go. All that said, I'm going to give
you a play along track so you can just practice the chords. You don’t have to worry about
singing and I'll put a link to that at the end of this video. As a matter of fact if
I get really ambitious I'll make a capo and make one in the key of E also. We'll see how
that goes.
Thanks for joining me today. It's been a pleasure hanging out with you and as promised I created
a backing track for you that you can practice along with it. I'll put a link to it right
up over here.