Bad Moon Rising by Credence Clearwater Revival. It's not only a fun song but it makes a great
exercise for the beginner guitarist. One of the big issues when you're first learning
guitar is being able to switch chords quickly and smoothly. Bad moon rising uses a quick
chord change with three common open chords over and over that's what makes it a great
exercise. What more could a guitar teacher want? I'm going to show you how to play the
song and how to practice that quick chord change so it smoothes better. I always wanted
to say that. Let's do this.
I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble along the way
I see earthquakes and lightning.
I see bad times today
Don't go around tonight cause
Well, it's bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise
So I had a decision to make, that is the original key that Bad Moon Rising is written in and
it's the key that Creedence Clearwater Revival plays it then. It's using D, the A chord and
the G chord. Now if I sing like John Fogerty way too high for my voice and it might be
high for your voice too. So there's some things I could do about that but I decided to opt
for playing it in the original key so you could play along with the videos. If you want
to change it to fit your voice, there's a couple of options there and I'll talk about
that towards the end of the video so be sure and hang out with me.
So let's start with the chords, three simple chords. We got the folk style D chord, an
A chord. Now I'm using a two finger A chord which works really well going from D to A
but anyone that you're comfortable with will probably be just fine and then a G chord and
I'm using the four finger G. Again you can use any one you want but going between these
chords, these fingerings tend to make it easy switching so look at what I'm doing. The D
chord to the A chord, I just move the first and second finger over. When I go to the G,
I put my third finger and pinky down and notice that the third finger stays right there as
I go back to the D and just take the pinky off. So if you're starting from scratch those
are good fingerings but if you already know the D A and G chords and they're a little
different, it's perfectly fine. Now I'll show you what we're going to use for the basic
strum and then I'll show you where it changes.
Let's start just doing the strum together. We're going to go down down up down up down
up that's the most basic strum I know actually down down up down up down up. Now when you
play this song there's ways to spice it up and I'll talk a little more about that later
too but for now let's just get the basic motion. Try it with me four beats one two and I'm
doing and up on end three and four and. Try it out. Here we go. Ready, hit it one two
and three and four and one two and three and four and. If it's something a little rough,
you might wanna try just angling your pick a little differently depending on whether
you're going down or up so your pick slightly angled up on the way down and slightly angled
down on the way up that makes it a little smoother and also try not to dig in too deep.
So next let's put the strum and the chords together. So we're going to start with the
verse and fortunately the verse is the same chord pattern over and over and over. It makes
kind of a nice exercise to practice your chord changes from A to G to D. So let me show you
what I mean.
We'll start with one full strum then we only get half a strum or half a measure for A and
half a measure for G and then you're back to D so it's a pretty quick change. It’s
two beats, two beats and then a full strum when you get back to D. Now let me play it
with the strumming and then we're gonna practice a little bit - D.
So you'll notice when I do the A and the G I don't try to squeeze a strum in there. I
just strum down twice. This is how we're going to practice it but I will show you some subtleties
to add a little more interest to it as well. Start with a D. Let's just do one basic strum.
Here we go four beats down two three four. Now two downs on A and G and then we'll do
one full strum on D.
So here's the exercise I want to propose to you and I'd really encourage you to practice
it because you're 90% of the way to the whole song just by this one exercise, just one strum
on D and then two downs on A, two downs on G and then start over that's it, that's the
whole exercise down. I'm kind of consolidating all the movement into a short space for practice.
Let's try that together a few times. I'll trust you to practice this and exercise and
I'm going to show you how it fits into the verse. Here we go - one two ready, hit it
down down up down up down down down down down down up down down right. I'm just doing one
full strum on the D again that's for the exercise purposes. Okay so go as slow as you need to
and just pick it up little by little. The speed pick it up little by little so you can
get it to where it's somewhere around the speed that you want to play the song. So a
good way to practice this is to pull out the metronome for a little while to start very
slow and count down two three four and then change two three four and then pick up the
speed little by little that'll keep you honest so you can tell if you're like slowing down
before you get to the change that's a common problem by the way. I noticed with students
is slowing down when they get to a hardcore change and they do that so often that they
don't even realize they're doing it after a while. We want to get over that right now
then you want to try it with the lyrics so I'm going to play it with the verse once through
and let's see how it goes. I'm not going to try singing it. I'll just hum the melody so
we'll count four and then we'll start. So it's going to be that pattern but remember
when we get to the D we're actually going to hold that D for a little longer. I'll show
you what I mean. Here we go one two ready go.
I see the bad moon a-rising
It's hard to sing that slow and see you play two more bars and three bars.
I see trouble on the way
that's one measure one two
I see
that's three measures of D
Let’s do it one more time
to finish up the verse and we'll get to that in a second. Now just to be clear what's happening
here is this is one round then two bars of D. So I said three earlier that's because
you're actually going back to the beginning and playing one more bar. It ends up sounding
like three together but really it's one in the beginning. One bar of the A and G and
then two bars of D so that's four bars total and then it starts over. One bar D one bar
that covers A and G one bar D one bar D then starts over another bar D because it's what
it starts off with.
Okay let's go on to the chorus. The chorus is actually easier because there's no half
bars, no quick changes. So here's what it sounds like two bars of G, two bars of D,
one bar A, one bar G and D. Listen.
Don't go around tonight Well, it's bound to take your life
That’s two bars
A
While there is .. one bar
On back to D two bars and then to the verse
I see that moon rising.
Okay now I want to give you a couple of pro tips. One, the strumming thing. When you do
the two downs it sounds better if you don't just strum straight down twice. It sounds
better. If you kind of hit the low strings and then strum so it's like this. So you can
experiment with that. You don't have to get it perfect but try adding a little variety
instead of always just hitting all the strings. Try hitting the low strings then all the strings
or the low strings and the high strings and add some character to the strum. The same
thing actually when I'm strumming down down up down up down up. I'm actually moving my
pick so it hits more the low and more the high. It's not just a bass note. I'm just
hitting on that side, the low and the high. Listen. Here's straight up and down. Now here's
what I'm actually doing
For that to work, you kind of got to know where the base notes are. For D it's the fourth
string, for A it's the fifth string and for G it's the low sixth string. And again you
don't have to hit just the bass note but you gotta know where you're aiming at. Now I promised
I would talk about how to change the song if you want to better fit your voice.
Now the way I’m playing it right now it's kind of low for my voice so one thing I could
do is put a capo on and raise it up. I'm going to put a cable on the third fret and I've
raised it up three half steps one fret, two fret, three fret, that's three half steps
or one and a half whole steps. It's now it was in the key of D, it's now D to E that's
one whole step, E to F is that half step either F B to C is half step so it's now in the key
of F but I'm going to play the same chords that D is now an F chord so it'd be easier
to play for me because it's not so low.
I see the bad moon a-rising I see trouble on the way
Okay, not ideal because the pitch of the guitar sounds a little higher kind of like a mandolin
or something, but it's still kind of low for my voice actually. I'd want to raise it up
even higher. What I would actually do is change the chords and that's beyond the scope of
this lesson because that's a whole thing about how to transpose a song. Luckily for you I've
made a whole video lesson on that and I'll put a link to it in the description below.
Well that's all I've got for now. If you found this video made you smile give me a thumbs
up and I've created another song lesson video that I think you're really gonna like. I recommend
you watch it now. Here's a link to it.