“Here’s six techniques on how to play guitar in some kind of weird bastard way,” jokes John Butler, in this exclusive lesson for Guitar World.
The American-born Australian singer-songwriter-guitarist has been stunning audiences for decades with his propulsive acoustic picking and altered tunings, creating songs that have clocked up millions of plays and won him an audience across the world.
His guitar vocabulary is as broad – Indian to Celtic, bluegrass to folk – as it is impressively ornate. With the decision to move away from the John Butler Trio moniker in 2019, on his new album, Prism, he shares all instrument duties with producer James Ireland, stretching into new musical terrains.
For this lesson, we asked him to show us what he does and how he thinks: the result is 20 minutes worth of unique playing and discussion about how he manages to play often complex guitar parts while barely breaking a sweat. Along the way, he uses examples from his songs Ocean, Faith, Spring To Come, Running To Keep Up and Funky Tonight.
John Butler's tunings and techniques
To begin the video, John uses his unique 11-string Maton guitar: this is a 12-string guitar but without the doubling high third string because a high tuned string can often break.
Instead of standard tuning, he opts for a resonant open B tuning of (low to high) BF#BF#BD#.
Open B tuning
This is a useful tuning as all the open strings played together creates a B major chord: move a full first finger barre up and down the fretboard to create more major chords.
You might decide to use thicker gauges for the low strings so they don't feel too loose: especially the fifth and sixth strings that detune from A down to F# and E down to B, respectively.
This is very similar to the open C tuning (low to high) CGCGCE that he often favours for his songs.
Open C tuning
1. Hammer-Ons
John uses a mix of picked strings with one or two hammer-ons from his fretting hand to create color with big note interval jumps. “When I’m playing Ocean," he says, "I like to start with my thumb so I have more room through the strings.” The technique approach works with major keys as well as with minor.
2. Levers
Levers is John’s term for pull-offs that come after either picked fretted notes or notes sounded after hammer-ons. Combined, pull-offs and hammer-ons take some work away from the picking hand and allow for notes that are unique to the techniques and also have a different timbre.
“You can rip right through those bastardized scales and I like the flow of them [in combination with chord strumming].”
3. Plucking Hammer-On (Pick-Hammer-Pick)
More hammer-ons, this time with pick-hammer-pick, with the first two on one string (pick with the first finger, i) and the final pick (using the second finger, m) being on a higher string.
Played with a triplet feel (1-2-3, 1-2-3), it's both colourful and capable of suiting fast tempos. Adding in a few slides into the fretted notes, it’s a wonderful sound, emotive and flashy, especially when traveling up and down the fretboard as John demonstrates in the video.
Put all three together, it’s a big and vibrant sound.
4a. Double Thumbing (Hybrid Thumbing)
Switching to another acoustic, this time to a 6-string in open D tuning (DADF#AD), John demonstrates "double thumbing".
Open D tuning
Inspired by the playing of Mississippi John Hurt, G. Love and Australian guitarist Stephen Pigram, in this technique the thumb picks the lower strings with a constant-quarter note rhythm. While John has used just his thumb when playing like this, he now favours a thumb pick for extra percussive bite.
“With my song, Faith, when you get the thumb going, I use the index finger at the same time," he says.
“It took me ages to do this – I sat in this van outside my house so I didn’t annoy all my room mates until 3 o’clock in the morning. It bent my mind. I showed my partner and she got it in five minutes! It says more about me than anything. So you go index finger then next with the middle finger, then next with the ring finger."
Below are four examples (Ex1a through to Ex1d) that are the building blocks to John's double thumb playing. As he's in open D tuning, no fretting is required to create great D major chord results. Keep your thumb playing the open D strings throughout each example.
Ex1a Double thumbing on open D strings
Ex1b Double thumbing and double-stops
Ex1c Double thumbing and extended double-stops
Ex1d Double thumbing, extended double-stops and quicker picking
4b. Double Thumbing (part 2)
For this example, John changes his guitar tuning.
“This is one of my favourite tunings," he says. "It’s basically a G tuning. From the fifth string down [ie moving to the higher strings] it’s GDGBD. Instead of having a D here though [points to sixth string], I have a C.
“That means I have all the three major chords of blues and country [G, C and D chords with an open low string for each chord]. I can then do riffs on the top strings. You can change the chords and do melodies all the time which I love. All the double thumbing is now on the low G string [fifth string], down.”
Open G with low C tuning
Now in this vibrant tuning, John becomes animated.
“What I want to show you is a beautiful double-stop that you can do in this tuning. It's just a major scale and I use it [the approach] in almost every song. I do circles with all these riffs and invert them all the time because I’m kinda simple that way. It's also a nice way to do that double thumbing.”
Example 2a (below) shows John's double-stops in G major, travelling down the fourth (D) and second (B) strings. All these double-stops are 6th intervals: the first one at the 12th fret is D and B played together. The distance between D and B is a 6th: (count this along) D-E-F#-G-A-B.
Ex 2a Double-stops in 6ths
Ex 2b Double thumbing and double-stops in 6ths
He then shows how he uses 6ths intervals on his song Spring To Come.
“With the riffs, you’re trying to make it dance in-between the double thumbing. I look at a lot of guitar as a very rhythmic and percussive instrument," he says. "I’m looking at it as a dance between both hands. I want to keep the picking going and then looking to see where the fingers can fit in.”
“Once you’ve got the basic technique down – have some discipline, through discipline comes freedom – then bring a bit of chaos in to see what happens over here [with the fretting hand]. That’s just a happy accident, it’s what my fingers want to do there.”
5. Chicken Picking
“This is something I came across in Byron Bay, east coast of Australia," he says. "A guy called Dave showed me this sick pattern. It’s really simple but so powerful and I use it in so many songs. It’s my favourite go to.”
John uses the technique on Running To Keep Up from his instrumental album, Still Searching. As regards another song, Funky Tonight he says "That’s all chicken picking but I’m skanking in-between. Chicken Pickin' is Sickin' Pickin'!”
John uses a thumbpick but you don’t need to.
"I gravitate towards the second finger, then the first finger [a reverse roll]. What I love about it is it gets that kind of really rolling, like it’s a gallop. It’s so much fun. Then you can slide into it [via the fretted notes]. Then you can start to look into other strings.”
Examples 3a-e are the initial examples John plays to demonstrate his chicken pickin' style.
Ex3a Reverse roll using the second finger (m) then the first finger (i)
Ex3b Forward roll using the first finger (i) then the second finger (m)
Ex3c Reverse roll riff
Ex3d Reverse roll with a slide into a fretted note
Ex3e Slides, hammer-ons, reverse roll and a double-stop
6. Technique Embellishments
Adding extra sparkle to picking and chords is an important aspect to how John's playing communicates to audiences. One of them is varying chords so the notes don't sound all at once.
“I often like to sweep into notes," he says, picking across several strings with his fingers before launching into a Celtic-sounding progression, adding drama by staggering a chord’s notes.
"That’s almost everything I’ve shown you," he says: "Sweep, hammer-on, lever and hammer and then chicken at the end."
And what of flat-picking, so loved by many acoustic guitarists?
“I don’t really know much flat picking. I tend to use it like a drumming thing again. I wish I could do what Billy Strings did, where he goes diddly-diddly-diddly. I tend to do more hammer and levers, [plays with considerable flash and string picking] That’s my version of flat picking.”
“That's how to play guitar in some kind of weird bastard way, by me!”
- John Butler's new album, Prism, is out now. For more information about tour dates, see JohnButler.com.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
