In this video by Keith Urban, he shows us how to play the iconic banjo licks from his songs “Gone Tomorrow (Here Today)” and “Somebody Like You.”
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Video text:
hi everyone keith here um i’ve had a few
people asking me
about uh two different banjo
licks in my songs um
one of them being song called gone
tomorrow
here today and uh i just thought
i’d grab this six-string d-ring and
play you the figure of how i’m doing it
so let’s see i’ll zoom in here a little
bit
so basically we’ve got the open d string
just an open d tilt the camera around so
you can see what’s going on
all right uh
pointy finger on the g string on
whatever the hell this fret is
that one right there and then pinky
on the b a b string up here
[Music]
those are my three primary strings i’m
going to use for this
opening figure
the reason i’m using the pinky is
because i’ve got to slide it up for
[Music]
to make that chord
[Music]
so here on this end i’m just rolling
with uh if we don’t flat pick it which i
think i did on the record was a flat
pick but
if we use fingers it would be
[Music]
that’s that first part the next one is
going to slide from here
[Music]
that’s the high e and the v string
making those sounds
which is a tone between them making it
almost a dissonant thing
[Music]
so
that’s that sequence
[Music]
and then you complete the phrase by
[Music]
on that b string
so together it’s
[Music]
there you go the next one uh
is somebody like you
oof in e
uh it’s a three finger pattern so your g
string
b string and the e string these three
i’m just putting my uh my pointy
finger on the uh whatever the hell that
fret is
so those are open here
and it’s just you can use any finger
it’s just sliding
that finger up a tone every time
until a half tone so
[Music]
that’s the simplistic foundation of it
is the movement of
so you’re only ever moving one’s one
string at a time so uh i mean you’re
only moving one
one string on a fret at the time so
so it’s really then it’s just more about
the hammer-ons the
[Music]
so
[Music]
so
[Music]
i hope that’s of some help bye
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