Tomas: Okay.
Welcome back.
I'm Tomas Michaud.
This is Guitar Songs to Learn for Beginners and this is Video Number 5, Up 5.
We're going to do today, Country Roads.
Now, this is the theme song for John Denver and I think it's what it made it famous, but
certainly what he's best known for and what I like about this song is it chose a good
song form.
It has a simple song form that is common among many songs even though the style and the rhythm
and everything might be different.
So let's go ahead and give it a shot.
Country Roads.
We're going to start off with the chorus.
G, D, C, and there's the E minor in there later on.
Okay.
Here we go.
Four chords, G, D, we got an E minor in there and C.
You should be getting used to those chords by now.
Sounds like this.
You could try playing along.
Country roads take me home to the place ... and the E minor, to C, back to G, this time with
C and end up with G. That's the chorus.
So let's go ahead and all strum to that, nothing too complicated.
We're going to do a strum that's down, down up, down, down up and then the second measure
will do down, down, up down, up down, up a little variety.
Simple strum, down, down up, down, down up, down, down.
You can use any strum that sounds fine for you.
This is a nice simple strum that seems to work for this son and it's okay if you vary
it, too.
It doesn't have to be strict.
Country roads, G, take me home to the place, E minor, to C, back to G, to D, now the C
and we'll end on the G, take me home.
Let's do the verse now.
The verse is the same chords, just a little different order.
Start with G, E minor, going to D, quick change to C, to D, repeat that, E minor, D, C, to
G.
Now the chorus, country road take me home, okay.
There's only one more part.
We'll call it the middle section or the bridge sometimes it's called.
Here's the bridge, starts with E minor, going to G, C go back to G, D. Now for the second
half of the bridge, start with E minor, driving down that road, I get even there I should
have been, D, yesterday, yesterday go to D7 if you know it, [inaudible 00:03:59] then
back to the chorus.
Country road, see that D7 really makes it feel like it wants to go back to the chorus,
but you can leave it out if you want to stick to the simple version.
So that's the whole song, Country Roads.
Before we close up this video, I want to show you one more thing.
In that bridge, I just showed you a simplified version.
There is an actual F chord in the real song.
I don't think you need to play that right now, but if you want to, I want you to know
it's in there.
It's in that last half of the bridge.
It goes like this and driving down the road, I get the feeling that I should have been
home yesterday, yesterday to the chorus, country road.
Thank you for joining me in this series, Guitar Songs to Learn for Beginners.
I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed teaching.
You know, if you haven't already, go ahead and download these songs and some tips.
The link's below this video.
I look forward in seeing you in some of my other lessons and above all, keep on practicing.
Bye for now.