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.
🎸 Beach Boys fun with Sloop John B! Strumming, Fingerstyle, & Lead Guitar Tips Included
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LESSON #595 Click to watch free video lesson In today’s new lesson I’ll teach you to play the folk-rock classic, Sloop John B. I learned this song through the Beach Boys, only recently realizing it came from the folk tradition of Nassau in the Bahamas. My lesson starts with the basic chords and strumming, before teaching a few ways to spice things up. I’ll end with an overview of the melody, in case you want to incorporate that into your strumming, fingerstyle, or lead guitar work. ALSO INCLUDED In addition to my main strum & sing tutorial, I've got a few bonus video lessons for this song. This includes both fingerstyle and melodic lead guitar arrangements, played over the same progression. I've also got a play-along video jam track and some practice notes to help you follow all this. Find all these on my lesson webpage » Other Recommendations When it comes to Sloop John B, there's so much good stuff out there. The oldest audio recording I could find was from 1935, from the Cleveland Simmons Group. If you have a time machine and find yourself in Nassau, ask the DJ for H’iste Up the John B. Sail – which is what the song was called back then: Jumping ahead twenty years, we have this Kingston Trio recording of from 1958. They listed this recording as The Wreck Of The John B. I guess Edmund Fitzgerald hadn't entered the chat yet... And then we get to the Beach Boys – whose 1966 recording took on the name Sloop John B. Here's a fairly recent clip where Brian Wilson reflects on how the song came to be, while they were recording Pet Sounds – before performing it in a live studio setup: To bring us to the current day, here's Josh Turner and crew, performing this song live in a tiny bus setup. Their enthusiasm is quite infectious! If you read this far, you gotta watch: So, hoist up the John B sail... and I'll catch you all in the next one! ✌️ David Browse all my lessons at songnotes.net
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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.
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Hey there, friends! Today I want to share what is possibly the single most helpful tip to help you change chords while strumming — and ensure your rhythmic groove stays smooth as butter 🧈 The secret: begin your chord changes while finishing your strum pattern. This means you will briefly be strumming open, unfretted strings... but this buys you valuable time, and it sounds just fine. Check out my new video lesson showing this up-close: LESSON #601Smooth Chord Changes while Strumming Click to...
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