MIW - takes 45 mins to learn the riff Me - *takes 4.5 hours to get the good evening part correct*

The guy playing at 03:05 was playing the album version, which is played on electric guitar without the slap. The fact that he wasn’t slapping isn’t wrong.

John Mayer is one of the greatest ever at the lobster claw technique. He picks this riff with two fingers.

John Mayer only plays with his thumb and forefinger the entire song.

"I've always wanted to learn how to play the guitar, but the beginning seemed so slow and frustrating..."

The hard part is SINGING while doing that crazy riff.

John Mayer just made a TikTok where he explains his picking technique and even THEN I’m still needing to see other peoples video to learn how to do it xD tricky stuff

Took me like a whole weekend to find out where that bass line was coming from. I searched everywhere. In my cupboards, my garage, I called my mom, nothing. And then I realised he dropped the low E to a C. As one does. Also that thumb advantage isnt fair.

Haha! It's so weird to see myself in one of your videos Tyler. Watching your Udemy and KZfaq channel grow last year was what inspired me to start teaching online, so thanks for that - it changed my life for the better. Just FYI - that picking pattern you highlighted in my video is just me looping the first four notes of the fingerpicking pattern that is applied to pretty much all of the chords (if my memory serves me well). I do mention to add the slap in after that part of the video :) All the best dude.

And you still hear people saying John Mayer is not that good of a guitar player :__)

That's actually a bass technique, Mayer is simply double thumping

It’s extremely motivating to see him get this so quickly and his talent. He started playing at 13 (I think) and I’m 14 so it really goes to show that you can achieve anything with practice. Thank you!

One thing that people don’t account for with John Mayer is his absolutely massive hands. If you’ve ever met him in real life you can see just how massive they are

I got a "Yousicion can teach you how to play the ukulele" add.

Me: *takes a week to learn this with nonstop practice MIW: *learns in 45 min

John wrote on his own tabs the following comment about that weird thumb position: Having GIANT thumbs help.

It puts my mind at ease watching this and seeing someone, who I consider to be rather talented when it comes to guitar, go through the difficulties of learning a new song and having the “wobbly baby deer legs” on the fretboard... great video

"The groove is heavy with this one" - Tyler on may 4th I see what you did

that "WTF" at 12:37 had me dying

6:59 me trying to guitar

Yeah the thumb is the real talent. Mayer should thank it every morning.

0:08 god I can smell the estrogen from over here

Something that really helps with ear training is playing a song you know well enough to know how it should sound then play it in the dark and hear yourself mess up you will and if you don’t then you are probably too advanced for this but when you mess up guess how many frets you need to move up or down I did that yesterday and it helped immensely

Thanks for the tips! I’m gonna use this and finally take on Smoke On The Water

He's 6'3", his hands are massive making it easier to stretch his thumb on that last chord

It's so depressing to see how easily he transcribes Edit: hey this blew up. at the time i commented id only been playing a.few months. definetly gotta better grasp now of what hes doing but he is still has phenomenal ear.

Legend has it John Mayer has his thumb insured for $10,000,000.00

Definitely an essential part of this riff is using your thumb & index finger since you lose some of the voicing easily if using standard fingerpicking patterns

Man this breakdown of each component of John's playing really helped me understand how to fit the pieces together. Thank you for this video.

Loved this video! Such an organic learning process is beneficial to viewers who envy the skill of guitarists like you. It shows us that it takes quite a bit of effort and practice to get this good.

After knowing this song for a good 6-8 months, I can finally play it just like he can. With the thumb and hit that Bb bass note on the last chord in the main riff, and do the thumb and the index technique.... Again, 6-8 MONTHS after originally learning this song... Must say it was worth it.

I really love the way you explained the importance of take tutorials away and get back to ear-practices. Actually you have encouraged me to follow trying to do it that way. I truly admire you sir!

I consider you to be one of today's greats. Watching you learn a song from scratch reminded me that 99% of the time spent on our instrument is a long grueling experimental process where it's all trial by error. It's easy to pick up the guitar, play what's comfortable, try something new, get frustrated, and put it down again. Watching someone I consider to be a pro who is leagues and leagues beyond, actually sit down and go slow on a song was really eye-opening. Thank you for the A+, down-to-earth content as always.

The dude is 6’3” I can only image how huge his hands actually are. 😳

As a guitarist who learned this song ten years ago or more now, I had a great time watching your video, everytime I hear this song I can normally learn something new, I noticed John plays a lot in the key of C, I'm trying to learn slow dancing in a burning room on an acoustic right now and I'm struggling, each of his songs thins the line more and more between simple and intricate. I leave y'all with a quote, "Simplicity is man's greatest intricacy, aristotle."

Thanks for posting a video showing the real struggles of learning certain songs. Nice to see someone much better than myself struggle until they get it as well

Ross Campbell has the best tutorial. He helped break it down terrifically.

Him: “That’s weird I don’t have grammarly and I don’t need it.” Grammarly who was about to give him 1,000,000 dollars so that he could promote their website: “You’ll regret that.”

This is one of the best how to practice videos on the internet. Thank you so much for this.

this whole riff is a humbling experience

Back in my day we used to have to pause and rewind the ol cassette player. You youngsters have it all these days. Feeling old😩

12:33 I laughed so hard because of this ahahahahahah

The one that this definitely helps with is to see that even high-level guitar players can make mistakes and play sloppy while learning a song. The hardest part of learning the guitar really does lie in frustration when you see people pull everything off perfectly, but we don't realise that they once too had the same problems that we do, they just overcame that and kept on trying.

Came back to an old video to see the progress. Ya came a long way.

I can’t do techniques on the guitar but i can pick my nose professionally

Zartimus is the GOAT for John Mayer live performance tutorials

Thanks for showing the process. Sometimes I just feel stupid when trying it by ear and not getting it. You gave me comfort that this is just a progress until you overcome.

Wow man such a pleasure watching you do this in real time. Please do more songs by John Mayer.

I don't even play guitar or know anything about it I just love the process of progression in any sort of art form.

It’s sad that he didn’t watch the “Cifra Club” class about this song. That guy is a genius, he just plays and teaches it perfectly. And it’s the live show version!

This was all at once interesting, surprisingly inspiring, and incredibly discouraging. I fucking loved it.

I learned how to play this riff in thirty minutes, yours is about ten times better. Keep up the great work!

I’m glad someone finally made something about this. If you want to see the correct technique, type in “how to play neon the right way” it’s the first video. I went through months of learning this technique and it is way more complex than you can imagine. You alternate the bass and g string with your thumb while getting the slap sound. I still can’t play it perfect after all this time but trust me it sounds so much better when you learn the right way.

I made it boys learned neon it costed me crying blood and sweat but made it and I’m proud

Nice Chris zoupa shout out dude. That man taught me guitar pre-youtube and he's the reason I'm so musically inspired today.

you have no idea how much inspiration came from this video. you, the best guitarist i know, took time like this to learn a song that i wouldve thought came easy to such a god. but for 2 years ive dreamt of being able to play that song. and to this day you still make my dreams feel less impossible man

Pro Tip for learning complex music by ear: separate the bass, melody, accompaniment parts, learn them individually, then fit them together. If you have an audio file, use a tool to slow the music down and loop difficul-to-comprehend sections until you have it down. Writing it out in some sort of notation to organize it, especially rhythmically, is hugely helpful. No need to shun reading and writing music. Not using those tools doesn’t make you a better musician.

My little boy has brought me to your videos. You're giving him some great direction on the thought process in breaking down chord transitions and lead voicing. Thank you. Regarding John's crazy thumbs, check out Stop This Train again. After the intro and into the verse, John frets a G on the E string, but somehow still manages the play the main intro motif throughout. I can't physically bend my fingers to reach.

The endings to your videos are always making me laugh! Keep up the good content :)

I'm late to the party but after watching many of your other videos, it's nice to see that you sound like the rest of us mere mortals when you are learning a track.

1. I've heard John himself talk about his weirdly long thumbs. 2. Even though it's not the exact same technique, John also uses his index nail to hit the string while doing the down motion. Just like using a pick. You can see this technique in "Stop this train" and "Heart of life". I suspect there's some of that here too. This technique adds this click sound which get combined with the slap.

wow that was super cool, seeing you discover it like that

Thank you. I really enjoyed you video. As a novice, I am still learning how to learn to play. Having a smashing time. Keep doing what your doing.

Great video! Learned a bunch, and I like the way you approached learning this riff.

Cifra Club its just great to learn songs!

I feel like most people play this riff wrong (or not exactly right to be precise). I think as you said, examining the artist playing it live is the best way to go

I gave up on this song and now this video popped up in my feed and now I’m on it again

This is an amazing video! Great dedication.

**several metronome clicks later** **ad plays**

Paul Davids explained it in his video and i think his version is almost 100% same to JM

that was a brilliant way of looking at this. you truly do have a great ear and follow up on it. very well done amego .

I freaken love you humor man.

Bruh just use youiscian app like all shredders out there

That riff is so SATISFYING to listen to 😩💗

Thank you for this, sir. I did not learn how to play neon, but I learned how one could learn a song by breaking it down into details. Thank you!

This was better than any tutorial. i learned how to play it in about 20 minutes since you did all the hard work.

the man the myth himself got sick of everybody getting stressed over this that he uploaded a tiktok tutorial himself hahah

I'm starting to try learn this song now. This is how I interpreted the picking pattern from watching his Live in LA video at .25x speed: John only uses his thumb and index finger. His hand moves in a constant 16th note down-up-down-up pattern, with each note plucking a string. First he plucks the low E with his thumb while his hand is moving down, then the D string with his index finger while his hand is moving up, then brings his thumb up and plucks the G string while moving down again, B with index while hand is moving up, then repeat, either slapping or playing the low E string again (depending on which part of the song you're at). Basically, this song is hard as fuck.

Ya, I like how you mentioned at the end about John Mayer's thumb. He's one of my favorite artists and when I tried to learn one of his songs I realized the problem of my small hands and his hands are MASSIVE so he can do things like that. Just means I need to find work arounds like you did and take more time on it.

I was half expecting you to rage quit but you kept calm and carried on.

It’s very humbling to see a pro like you trying to learn something in Guitar. Then the humbling stopped after seeing you learn it in under an hour.

He flick and slaps at the same time. That’s what gives him the “gun shape” hand

Love that you did this, I can relate to the process you went through because this is what I do when I learn a song on KZfaq. I usually watch a bunch of videos, use the one I like or parts from others that make it playable for me, then I will look at and compare it to the sheet music and clean up the parts where I can. Every song on KZfaq is a different way to play it, but thats all good, I just want to be able to get through the tune first in structure and form, then after I played it a few times I will clean it up while listening to the recordings slowed down.

Where the light is… indeed the one of best performances!

That scene at 12:39 killed me. I could not stop laughing when he cut to John mayer with the WTF watermark.

12:36 LMFAOO WTF😂😂😂

Thanks for the great laugh on the thumb WTF moment. It’s even more funny when you’ve actually tried that position.

I really appreciate him showing the hiccups in finding the notes and showing the little mistakes, it proves that even playing consistently for what I assume is 10+ years he isn't completely a master at guitar and that's really awesome. I know this video is old but still, appreciated!

Paul David's breakdown of this riff is very good.

That thumb doe. Great for giving MiW likes👍 🎸🎶

As someone a year into learning. This video is prefect. Thank you for the pov 'good guitar player learning guitar'

It is comforting to see that even professional musicians go through the same struggle when it comes to learning new songs... 😅

"Oh, that's weird, I don't have Grammarly, and I... don't need it..." Loved that comment! That's how I feel every freakin' time that ad pops up.

Should have continued with Ross' video. He explains the slapping after he shows the picking pattern.

came here and liked just because i learned this and i appreciate the effort taken to do so.

Your approach is brilliant and helpful. Well done 👏

I lol'ed so hard at the grammarly comment ;D made my day

The thumb and forefinger pattern is actually the way that John Mayer plays.

Wow amazing video! Love your content man

Love your content bro, big fan. Keep it up 👍