Million Years Ago by Adele is a song that may introduce you to some jazzy new chords as well as letting us explore different ways of playing the rhythm – namely jazzy comping and the fingerstyle pattern heard on the album. This song is firmly in intermediate territory. The chords aren’t particularly hard, but the changes are fairly quick and as mentioned some of the chords may be new. No problem though – just start out at a slower tempo and gradually work your way up to speed. I will encourage you to use your right hand fingers to play through the song even before we do the picking pattern. Million Years Ago has almost all 4-note chord voicings; using your fingers will help you to play the right strings for each chord and it also helps the jazzy comping sound better. This is a fun song to learn; please enjoy.
Part I – How to play the song, including jazzy comping
Part II – How to play the finger picking pattern
Lesson Road Map:
Part I
00:04 – Play through
00:56 – Overview
01:58 – Using your fingers / right hand finger positions
04:22 – Intro progression
09:13 – Intro play through / rhythm count
09:47 – Verse progression, with endings
17:57 – Verse play through
19:15 – Rhythm, one strum per bar
21:15 – Rhythm, jazzy comping: ‘bass / chord’
24:41 – Chorus progression, song structure
26:47 – Final thoughts
Part II
00:04 – overview
00:55 – intro progression (same right hand as in part 1)
01:49 – main picking pattern for verse / chorus
04:52 – verse play through up to 1st ending
05:54 – 1st ending to verse (also same as 1st/2nd ending for chorus)
07:50 – another way to play 1st ending
09:57 – one more way to play 1st ending (used on album)
12:37 – 2nd ending verse
16:02 – another fingering for 2nd verse ending
19:01 – verse play through
19:57 – chorus pattern (similar to verse)
20:24 – chorus play through
21:27 – another voicing of C#m7 to end the chorus