Badge and Gun - John Mayer

Hey everyone, and welcome to this new tutorial!

This time, I decided to go against the usual principles of my channel and make an exception: this tutorial is not an exact representation of the guitar part from the studio version. The reason is simple—whenever I choose a song for a tutorial, I always try to play and sing it at the same time (which I believe is the goal, right?). But in this case, I just couldn’t do it because the studio version features a really complex guitar part. Even John Mayer himself plays it differently in live performances, which further supports my point. So here we are with a version that we can call “simplified,” making it possible to play and sing at the same time.

I also tried to keep the tabs as clean as possible, leaving out ghost notes and some slides that naturally happen when moving from the tenth to the third fret or from the second to the tenth.

As for the hands, the right-hand follows a fairly consistent pattern (thumb, index, thumb, middle), with only a few exceptions. You don’t necessarily need to use your ring finger unless you want to play the note on the tenth fret of the first string during the bridge. The left hand doesn’t require much guidance, but I’d recommend avoiding the use of a half-barre for the lower notes to maintain the ‘staccato’ effect created by the index finger jumping between the sixth and fifth strings.

I’ll wrap this up by saying that I’m aware this isn’t my best performance, but I still hope you find it useful!

As always, you can find the tabs on my Patreon. Have fun learning!