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If reading isn’t really your thing, we’ve included a great video tutorial for Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynrd below. If this and my other lessons have proven helpful to you, please consider making a one-time donation to my tip jar. Contributions of any amount help make this project possible . Here's a guide I made showing the purchase & print process, including answers to common questions about my song sheets. There are down strums for all 8 beats, with up strums added after beats 4, 5, and 8. Remember that up strums always come between beats, and down strums always come on beats.
While this video assumes some knowledge on the part of its audience, beginning guitarists will find much to take away. Get started playing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" on your acoustic guitar with this video tutorial. Getting your bass notes to sound right with just enough palm mute is important. If your muting is too heavy you’ll kill the note altogether while applying too little pressure with not mute the sound. The only way is to practice and eventually you’ll develop the delicate touch of knowing how to apply palm muting in a way which is just right. Sweet Home Alabama is one of those no capo songs that every beginner should learn because it gives you the basics you will need in a guitar lesson.
Play "Sweet Child O' Mine"on the electric guitar
The F chord is actually the transition back to the C chord which then leads you back into D major. In one part of the song, and only once, a wild F chord appears. We’ve given you the layout of the section with the chords and lyrics below. All articles, images, product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement unless specified.
Middle finger goes on the fourth fret of the G third string. Cadd9 – Index finger goes on the second fret of the fourth D string. Ring finger is placed on the third fret of the B second string.
Play Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" on guitar
All of these Sweet Home Alabama chords can be played without really having to change your hand position. If you’re a complete beginner then we have the chords stripped down for you below to make them easier to play. Make sure to practice them individually before trying to play them all together. There are many ways you can play this – each has slight variations in the final measure. I’m not super interested in mapping each of these out to their exact location in the song… for that, I leave it to you to listen to the album version, watch my video, and combine these as you prefer.
The chord progression is jazzed up by the musical movement that the lead guitar takes over along with some other instruments. The chords we’ve given here give you the basic foundation of the song. If you are wanting to learn how to play Sweet Home Alabama on acoustic guitar, you will want to watch this beginner guitar lesson. So this is obviously an all time classic tune for guitar players. As the video shows, you can still get a great sound playing this on acoustic even through the original is played on electric guitar into vintage Marshall amps. There are three main chords you will need to know to play this song – D major, Cadd9 and G major.
The Right Guitar Sound
Letting strings ring out is all about your hand positioning. If you lean too hard onto the strings with your fingers then you can end up muting the other strings which you need. A great way to practice this technique is to play some arpeggios. If you want to make it a little easier without the F chord then you can play the A, D and G strings of the chord which will help you transition to C major much more easily.
This is a 2 part lesson, simply login to watch the second part. For 99% of the song, you’ll only need to know these 3 chords. If you’ve never seen the Cadd9 chord before, don’t be scared! It’s actually easier to play than the typical C-major chord, since you’ll be keeping your left-ring and left-pinky fingers in the same place as they are in the G chord.
D Major – Index finger on the second fret of the third string which is the G. Middle finger goes on the second fret on the first string which is E. Your ring finger goes on the third fret and on the B, second string.
The song requires only 3 chords which are G, Dsus2 and Cadd9 – you can read about suspended and add9 guitar chords here. These are considered beginner open chords and are quite easy to play in sequence with just a little bit of practice. As you’ll see on the video lesson, keeping your 3rd finger as an anchor point on the B string plays an important role in making the song that much easier to play. In fact, most people will find that the it’s the guitar licks which present the greatest challenge.
You can play a full 6 string F if you please, but know you can also get away with a 4-string F that only uses the middle four strings. My aim with this lesson is to give you the core building blocks you’ll need to take this song to advanced places, should you wish. I won’t cover the solo or 100% note-for-note tab recreations of what each guitar plays during the song, as that’s a huge effort and others have done that in many cases. If you're wanting to play the original version of this song, this is NOT the tutorial for you. This is for beginners who want an easy version to sing along with. All of these strings should be played separately but you can allow them to sing out together to make the main melody.
F Major – Index finger goes on the first fret of the B second string. Middle finger goes on the second fret of the G third string. Your ring finger sits on the third fret of the D fourth string. G Major – Index finger on the third fret of the E first string.
The track was a 2nd hit for the guys and actually none of the 3 writers of the song were from Alabama. Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington were both born in Jacksonville, Florida. The chord only pops up briefly and it may not make much sense to play it but when you play the full song you will see that it does.
It’s great to play at parties or around the campfire with your acoustic guitar. Sweet Home Alabama only has three chords through the entire song, making it simple to play on acoustic guitar. Apeggions make chords sound a lot more full and they let you check your hand position so that you can tell if you are muting any of the strings. There’s one place in the song (the “boo-hoo” lyric) where an F chord is needed.
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