Take Me To The River Chords

Learn how to play Take Me To The River!

The verse and chorus riff use the chords of bVIIx followed by IV to draw us back to a I7 in Take Me To The River.

At 0:46 the bridge/pre-chorus section go off on the extreme:

bVIx - bIIIx - bVIIx – IV, exaggerate the lyrical claims “… I wanna know, won’t you tell me”.

Spy Tunes have recorded Take me to the River in two keys: Paul Cullum sings in E (as original) and Miss Al Brown sing in G.

Take Me To The River Original Key

In this first version we take advantage of the open strings.

Being in the key of E major, but from a blues perspective we can borrow chords from what Em would have used.

The same goes for soloing over Take Me To The River, use both E major and E minor pentatonic as well as the blues scale to get the right notes.

Notice how the:

bVIx – bIIIx – bVIIx are simply: I – V – IV in C Major!

For a solo over this section, follow these chords using the concept of new chord = new scale!

Use the Blues Jam Track bundles for this.

Take Me To the River Chords Transposed

In Miss Al Brown’s version we move up to the key of G.

In general, the female voice needs to sit a bit higher than the male so don’t be surprised if this happens to you again!

Being able to change key like this without having to relearn the song should be high on your list of priorities.

The only way to get to this stage is to think in numbers, especially when a song is using “b” and “x” variations.

I highly recommend that you practice chord progression exercises to get better at thinking in numbers rather than chord names.

This is one of the most important alterations you can make to your perception of music on the guitar.

Learn more in the Conspiracy, as well as by playing around with the SWS and Chordacus.