Josh Smith - How To Play 'Brown Gatton' Part 1
LIVE FROM FLAT V by Josh Smith.
JAMES MEETS DANNY.
“BROWN GATTON” is a song Josh Smith recorded in 2017 for his album Still, which leaned on the jazzier side of things. As the title suggests, the tune is essentially his expression of “James Brown meets Danny Gatton.” Singer and bandleader James Brown is, of course, the Godfather of Soul, and Danny Gatton, for those who may be unfamiliar, was one of the greatest all-around guitarists of all time.
JAMES MEETS DANNY.
“BROWN GATTON” is a song Josh Smith recorded in 2017 for his album Still, which leaned on the jazzier side of things. As the title suggests, the tune is essentially his expression of “James Brown meets Danny Gatton.” Singer and bandleader James Brown is, of course, the Godfather of Soul, and Danny Gatton, for those who may be unfamiliar, was one of the greatest all-around guitarists of all time.
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MusicTranscript
00:00All right, Josh Smith back again. This month we're going to start talking about my song
00:08Brown Gatton. This tune is from my album Still, which was a jazzier album I did, and the title
00:15should tell you a few things about this tune. It's basically James Brown meets Danny Gatton.
00:20That's at least what I was thinking when I wrote it. So it's at its heart a James Brown
00:25shuffle like, you know, but mixed with Danny Gatton hybrid picking and ideas, and of course
00:35some interesting twists and turns. So the phrase of the song, the melody, the head of
00:40the song has a two beat bar, every third bar. So it goes like this, one, two, three.
01:04So what's happening there is, one, two, three, four, one, two. So it's turning itself around
01:17with a two beat bar after every third bar of the melody. This leads to some cool twists
01:24and turns, especially when you go through the change, because then the second time
01:28we do it, we modulate to C. So we go.
01:59So that adds a lot of kind of forward motion to the tune. When we hit those two beat bars,
02:07it kind of, the audience kind of feels something, because something different than the ordinary
02:11is happening, but it doesn't feel out of place, because it's still in the same time signature.
02:17You're just dropping two beats and starting a phrase in a weird spot as far as what the
02:21ear is used to. And then when we get into the solo later, that makes for really great
02:27cool phrasing things, because you can have licks that cross the bar in a different way
02:31than you're used to and resolve in a weirder spot, and I love that. And that was kind of
02:36the Danny Gatton twist on the James Brown thing.
02:39Then we get to the bridge of the song, which goes to the four chord, and we're full on
02:43James Brown here, where I'm playing straight eighth notes.
03:03So we're basically chromatically moving around the four.
03:14With those stabs on the five chord, and then we're into the solo. So that's the meat and
03:24the potatoes of this tune, Brown Gat.