Keith Urban Banjo Lesson - Bailey and Banjo

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]

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]

i hope that’s of some help bye

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