Thomas: Hey there, budding guitarists.
I'm Thomas Michaud.
Thanks for joining me in my five-video series "Guitar Songs to Learn" for beginning guitar.
This first one, "Stand By Me" by Ben King, is a great one to learn by guitarists because
it uses a very standard chord progression that's used in lots of songs in its era, and
if you watch all the way to the end, I'm going to show you first a basic, easy version of
this song and I'll throw in a cool little lick at the end to show you something you
can actually work for.
Let's get going.
Welcome back.
Let's do the basic chord progression.
Four chords, the G-chord, the E-minor, the C-chord and the D. Finger the G-chord any
way you want, but I like to use the one with my pinky.
Easier to get to the E-minor and C from there.
Up to you.
Let's play that chord progression nice and slow.
Four chords, four strums ... to theE-minor ... C ... and D. That's about 99% of that
song.
There's one part at the end of the "Stand By Me" chorus where it goes from ... at the
end, it goes from the G, back to the D and play the D a couple more times.
I'm going to show you where that is.
First, let's do a simple strum to go with this.
Make your G-chord and here's the strum.
It's down ... mute ... down ... mute, andthere's a little syncopation there.
You can try to get it by imitating me and playing along with the video.
If you want, look at my series, Basic Guitar Chords, and I do a more detailed version of
that strum and spend a little more time on it.
For now, we're going to put the two together.
Listen.
Try that with me.
Nice and slow.
We're just going to do G, E-minor, C and D. Ready, go.
To G, then two E-minors ... one C ... one D ... and then G. Here's the ending part.
Listen ... and then, start again.
That's the whole song.
Ready for a cool lick?
I wouldn't call this a beginning lick, but to give you something to work for.
Check it out.
Not that hard.
First, the six-string, I'm going three notes, that's open E, F-sharp, that's the second
fret and then third finger G, then make the G-chord.
I just hit that G-note again in the third fret.
Then I go down, the same notes, and make the E-minor chord.
Open E there, that's the open E base note.
Then to the C, that's the fifth string.
That's open second fret and third fret.
Then, open D-string, that's the fourth string, and then start over.
That's the whole lick.
Listen again.
You can try playing along if you want.
Thank you for joining me, that was fun.
I look forward to seeing you in the next video, and go and check out the link below.
I got some more stuff for you to help you with this song and some other ones in the
future.
Take care for now.
Bye.