Where Next?
An Easy Next Song to Learn
You now have the skills necessary to teach yourself some more songs on your own. If you're not picky about which songs you learn, I'd start with "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield. I've got a
thorough lesson on how to play it on YouTube.
More Good Beginner Songs
Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash
Let It Be by The Beatles
Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett
Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison
Teardrops on My Guitar by Taylor Swift
The First Cut is the Deepest by James Taylor (as performed by Sheryl Crow)
Good Riddance by Green Day
You Are My Sunshine by Jimmie Davis
A Horse With No Name by America
The Joker by The Steve Miller Band
Come As You Are by Nirvana
Looking for a Greater Challenge?
I have a few other free song lessons on YouTube right now,
"Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen and
"Let Her Go" by Passenger, that are more advanced, but you might enjoy them if you love the songs and are up for a big project. Look for lots more song lessons in 2016.
Venturing On Your Own
If you want to search for a song you love, I'd stick to songs that use the following chords: A, Am, A7, C, D, Dm D7, E, Em, E7, and G. There are a bunch of other beginner-friendly chords, but these are the most common.
Where to find charts for these songs? On this site, of course! I have about 650 charts of tons of easy, popular songs. Just click
Chord Charts in the menu.
Alternatively, you can visit
Strum Videos and browse the songs organized by which strum pattern they use.
Good Luck, and
let me know how it goes!
That’s all I’ve got for you right now. I really had a blast putting this course together, and I hope you had fun. So where should you go from here?
Well if either of those other songs that I taught in this course sound like fun, I’d just hop back and learn those too. Jump back to lesson 2.07 if you want to hear what the song sounds like, and then skip ahead to 3.08 where I teach you the strumming pattern for the song. From there, just watch the videos that pertain to that particular song.
Next, I recommend getting some more chords and strumming patterns under your belt by learning a couple new beginner songs. I’ll keep a list of places you can go to learn this stuff. In particular, I’ve got a growing collection of free song lesson videos on my YouTube channel. I also have over 600 chord charts on heartwoodguitar.com--these are songs I’ve taught my private students, and a lot of them are good beginner songs.
And once I launch this course, I’m going to get right back to work producing more material to add to it. Stuff like how to teach yourself songs without my help, essential strumming skills, picking single-note melodies and riffs. I’d love to hear what you’re interested in learning, and I’m also eager to get any feedback you have on this course, so drop me a note on my Facebook page, YouTube channel, or send me a message through the contact form on this site.
I look forward to hearing from you, and if you’re ever in Seattle, look me up!
Enjoy your music!
How's it going?
Are you loving the lesson? Confused? Have a suggestion? I'd love to hear from you.