Walz Guitar - Learning a Bossa with Black Orpheus

It must be some psychological safety net to enjoy bossa nova as most people associate it with elevator music (or Muzak). Alternating between picking and fingerstyle, bossa nova is a great way to loosen up your fingers and get the right hand thumb pumping out a bass line. The goal of this mini-lesson here is to show how you can do this with a pick or fingers to learn a little about this style.

Black Orpheus has some nice progressions. I'm going by the version in the Real Book. The song starts with an A B E progression. It's not that simple, this is jazz, and this is bossa nova. Fortunately the song gives us a familiar chord before throwing something new at us. It starts with A minor--simple enough--for four beats then B minor 7 flat 5 for two betas and E seven flat nine for two beats. If you're new to jazz chords, just think this is like Louie Louie or Wild Thing with similar chords in a different order (those songs would be E A B, etc.) (sorry if that relation offends jazz/music purists--well not really sorry, just being nice). Here's the fingering for the three chords, only three strings are used, the bass notes will come from the D, A, and E strings:


e| - - 0  - -  -  - -  1  - |
B| - - 1  - -  3  - -  0  - |
G| - - 2  - -  2  - -  1  - |
D| - - -  - -  3  - -  -  - |
      Am      Bm7b5  E7b9

Here's the bass notes. You can do this either with a pick or fingers. If fingers use p for the bass notes and ima for the chord. Am has two bass notes since it covers 4 beats.

Am : open A string, D string 2nd fret (E note)
Bm7b5: A string 2nd fret (B note)
E7b9: open E string

Not too hard. Here's how it fits together. The bass notes are on the down beats of 1 and 3 and the chords are on the down beat of 2 and the up beat of 3. Repeat this.


1 e & a | 2 e & a | 3 e & a | 4 e & a | 1 e & a | 2 e & a | 3 e & a | 4 e & a |
A         Am        E    Am           | B         Bm7b5   | E   E7b9          |

Note the bass pattern: A, E, B, E. What makes this a bossa is the rhythm and syncopation of the bass and chords. Often the bass notes are the root and the inverted 5th. I broke from that by doing a higher E note for the Am chord. You can do that, it seemed too repetitive for this exercise.

The remainder of Black Orpheus uses this progression as a main theme and adds to it and goes in some interesting directions. Have fun and rock the bossa.