Beginner Guide to Bossa Pop

You can copy every chord from a tab site and still have your Bossa Pop sound… bad.

Usually, the chords are right, but the shapes aren’t.

Bossa players almost never use the big open chords or full barres you'll see online. They use compact four string voicings, picked so the notes flow into each other. Same chord names, completely different sound.

Oh, and the correct chords are often easier to play than the ones you tried.

When people don't know this, they assume they're not good enough to play this style. In reality the issue is just the voicing, which I’ll teach you in this video:

First, a bit of context

Our story begins in the 1950s, when a young João Gilberto went all in on music against his father's wishes. After struggling to maintain steady work singing and playing guitar in various ensembles, his father decided there must be something wrong with his son, and had him admitted to a mental hospital for a psych evaluation.

Fortunately, he was released a week later and kept working on his music.

His breakthrough came in 1956, when his soft guitar style, mimicking the already popular Samba rhythm met his whispery, vibrato-free vocals. Three years later he released his debut album, and Bossa Nova was in popular music for good.

The groove foundation

Bossa Nova is a simple style to play, but if you skip one of these key details it won't necessarily sound bad, it just won't be a Bossa. ‍

Samba, the parent genre, is an upbeat, for-the-people genre of music in Brazil that follows a simple but very recognizable pattern.

If we imagine it in 4/4, a samba is quarter, quarter, eighth, quarter, eighth.

Bossa Nova rhythm is a Samba, followed by a reverse samba.

If we imagine it in 4/4, a Bossa Nova is:

quarter, quarter, eighth, quarter, eighth | eighth, quarter, eighth, quarter, quarter

Learn the basics of the rhythms, because when your favourite artists bend these rules and it still sounds like the style, you'll have the foundation to fall back on and still play the song with the correct feel.

Speaking of feel, Bossa Nova is soft. It was born on nylon string guitars in small apartments. Play with the dynamic range of your instrument.

What I've found works especially well is to imagine balance. I line my picking hand up so my thumb and three fingers are all an even distance from the strings, making their volume output roughly the same when I'm playing quietly.

Why standard chords don't work in Bossa Pop

Bossa Nova was built on a jazz technique called comping, where you selectively play four of the strings in a way that hits all the key notes of the chord, and where the notes flow into each other deliberately. That flow is called voice leading.

Let's pick on a Gmaj7.

The notes of the chord are G – B – D – F#.

Look at a standard Gmaj7 bar chord and the notes are G – D – F# – B – D – G.

In comping, you get to pick which four strings hit all four notes. In my experience, the go-to in Bossa Pop is to drop the A and drop the high E, leaving you with G – X – F# – B – D – X. (or, written in tablature style 3 - X - 4 - 4 - 3 - X)

What we just did to Gmaj7 can be done to any chord in your favourite Bossa Nova and Bossa Pop songs. This editing of the chord voicing is exactly how you start sounding like a Bossa natural.

Quick tip on chord voicing: if you're playing an extension with five notes and you can't decide which one to get rid of, the correct answer is almost always to drop the 5th, but more on that later.

The Most Important Shapes

Major 7th

A major triad plus a major 7th interval from the root. A major 7th sits one fret below the octave.

Take a regular C chord for example X - C - E - G - C - E. Lower the higher C one fret and it becomes B, which is a major 7th up from the root.

The idea is the same on a G bar chord: drop the A and high E and you're left with G - X - G - B - D - X. Lower the octave by a half step to F#, and there's your Gmaj7.

Minor 7th

A minor triad plus a minor 7th interval. A minor 7th is two half steps below the octave. From C, that's Bb. Flatten the 3rd of C major to switch it to C minor, and the notes become C – Eb – G – Bb.

So a minor 7th is a major 7th with a flat 3rd and a flat 7th.

If you take the maj7 shape, and flatten the third and 7th of the chord, there’s your m7 shape.

Dominant 7th

Written simply as G7 or D7. It's a tension chord that harmonically pulls the song along.

Jazz musicians sometimes call it a "major minor 7" because that's exactly what it is. A major triad, plus a minor 7th. For example, C7 is C – E – G – Bb.

A pro tip for these… They resolve to the chord name a 4th up, or a 5th down. Counting from C… C is 1, D is 2, E is 3, F is 4. So C7 resolves to F. Or, if you want it to sound more jazzy, more bossa-y (not a real word, but you know what I’m saying), go from C7 to Fmaj7.

More Chord Shapes

Inside the video, you’ll also learn about sus chords, and 9th chords.

FAQ

Why do my Bossa Nova chords sound wrong even when I'm playing the right chord? Because a chord name doesn't tell you the voicing. Tab sites give you open chords and full barres, which are often too …big sounding for this style. Bossa Nova uses compact four string voicings chosen so the notes flow into each other, and so that you can control the sound with fingerpicking.

Which note do you drop from an extended chord? Almost always the 5th. If a chord has five notes the 5th usually carries the least harmonic information. Since you only have four fingers to pick the strings with (thumb, index, middle, ring), you can drop the 5th, or move it to an alternating bass note against the root.

What's the difference between add9 and 9? An add9 is a major triad plus the 9th, with no 7th. Cadd9 is C–E–G–D. A 9 chord is a dominant 7th plus the major 9th up from the root. C9 is C–E–G–Bb–D.

Do I need a nylon string guitar to play Bossa Nova? No, but it helps with the soft sound of the style. Whatever you're playing, play your instrument gently instead of digging in.