Empty Gardenby Elton John

Empty Garden is Elton John and Bernie Taupin's tribute to John Lennon, released in 1982 on his Jump Up! album. Elton has played it in various keys over the years and we take advantage of that by looking at the progression by chord number instead of specific names, at first at least.

This starts out as an ear training exercise for the student to try to identify the chords after getting oriented in each key by hearing the sequence I-IV-I-V-I. We go through three different keys in Part 2. All is revealed in Part 3 and even a beginning student should be able to strum through the progression.

We add a few of Elton's more piano-friendly embellishments and specific details in Part 4 for those who want to add polish it up a bit.