Learn to play guitar with weekly video lessons & print-friendly guides! Learn your favorite songs & techniques with step-by-step tutorials that actually explain how to get from here to there.
🎸 Learn to Fingerpick "If I Needed You" Step-by-Step
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LESSON #608 Click to watch free video lesson After many many requests for this song, the time has come! Happy to share this new lesson, where I break down this Townes Van Zandt classic and teach it in the style of Emmylou Harris & Don Williams, as played in their their 1981 duet. I include a few strumming tips, should you want to play a campfire version — but otherwise I dive into the Travis-style fingerpicking, showing four levels that slowly build up to the “full” version.
See my lesson webpage for all my additional materials for this song. This includes step-by-step practice guide, a link to the lyric sheet, and zoomed playthroughs (with tabs on screen) for each level of the fingerstyle I teach.
More from Emmylou & Townes Van Zandt Return of the Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons — Emmylou's voice makes this one shine! One of my all-time favorite songs. Travis Picking Fun with Rex's Blues — another song written by Townes Van Zandt, but I teach the version played by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott featuring Emmylou Harris and Nanci Griffith. Townes Van Zandt Fingerstyle, Simplified (feat. Pancho and Lefty) – a few helpful ways to simplify difficult Travis-picking fingerstyle. I demonstrate with Pancho & Lefty, Graceland, and Don't Stop Believing.
Thanks and Enjoy! To the many of you who requested If I Needed You — enjoy the lesson! Feels great to finally have this one added to my library. Next up... an all-time classic Christmas song! Until then... have a good one my friends ✌️ David Browse all my lessons at songnotes.net |
Song Notes by David Pots
Learn to play guitar with weekly video lessons & print-friendly guides! Learn your favorite songs & techniques with step-by-step tutorials that actually explain how to get from here to there.
LESSON #614A Guitarist's Guide to Piano Man Click to watch free video lesson In today’s lesson I’ll teach you a guitar arrangement of Piano Man, the 1973 classic from Billy Joel. This song uses a singular chord progression for most of the song (intro, verse, chorus) — which I’ll walk you through step by step. I’ll also include a handful of practical ways to simplify some of the trickier chords, as translating piano chords to a guitar isn’t always straightforward. To the many of you who...
Happy Monday, my friends! To those of you impacted by the winter storm across the USA, I hope you're holding up okay. Here in Austin, we had a blanket of ice descend across our yard & street. The kids enjoyed a snow day off school, and my routine has been a bit up-ended... but we're in good spirits! Today I want to showcase some helpful practice tips from my lesson library, in addition to some new Q&A videos I posted in the Song Notes members forum. Let's dive on in! IN CASE YOU MISSED...
LESSON #612Melodic Fingerstyle Fun with "Piano Man" Click to watch free video lesson In this lesson I’ll teach you to play a melodic fingerstyle arrangement inspired by Piano Man by Billy Joel. Specifically, I show how we can play the main melody of the song (heard in the verse and chorus) and play it along with a few other notes from each chord that’s used. The result is melodic, but also harmonically rich — and is a blast to play! In addition to my main video (above), don't miss the "Part...