Check out this free lesson from Guitar Control instructor Sean Daniel on how to play Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black on guitar. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with this lesson.
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Introduction
What’s going on everybody? Sean Daniel with guitar control here and today we’re gonna learn How To Play Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black On Guitar, awesome song. It’s really only four chords.
We’re doing an acoustic representation of it that tries to get a lot of the rhythm along with kind of like the spirit of the song in it. So it click the link below for the chart to go along with How To Play Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black On Guitar.
Back To Black With Barre Chords
But essentially How To Play Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black On Guitar it really sounds like this. We’re gonna do a barre chord version and a not barre chord version so sounds like this. So really, really great song. I think we’re gonna start with the record version first and then we’ll do the unbarred version. So D minor is gonna be the first chord we’re gonna do. Now you can play this D minor if you want or you can play this D minor if you want.
First let’s start off with this shape because we can kind of play almost the entire song with just this shape which is really nice. Pointer fingers on the fifth fret of the A string, ring finger seventh fret right behind that middle finger six on the B string you can get it the fifth fret on the high E string if you’re nasty in but you just want to get the middle four, thus making it not really a barre chord you can do that too again, we’ll have a couple different ways but more than just the chord the strumming is kind of what gives it the elements of the original production which is really just fantastic.
So here’s how it’s gonna sound again, so kind of like a percussive old school type rhythm that we have going on, again you do the same thing with a open D minor one, three B to G either one of these chord voicing’s is gonna work for the strumming. Okay so don’t be deterred if you know this is a lot easier for you to miss don’t worry about it but we’re gonna use this as an example because it kind of get about a shot of what’s going on here right. So super slow it’s gonna sound like this. Okay so if we just kind of try to count it we’ve got this first down stroke and then a mute and then after that we’re gonna do an up-and-down in time but it’s really gonna be kind of like and then back to the Meuse. Okay that’s gonna be the whole pulse of the song and it’s gonna have that kind of vibe where it’s kind of peppy moving forward a little bit because of these are kind of right before the downbeat we get a little bit of a upstroke and then at the end we have two up strokes before that last kind of down stroke again, open is fine, it’s a little bit more difficult to mute the open chords, which is why I like going with the barre chords.
First you can see my fretting hand, see my ring finger has nothing to do with that chord when I’m playing it, it really is just helping with the muting so really before you go on to the next scores just try to get that one strum strumming pattern down, then you take the same shape and move it to the next chord which happens to be a G minor chord.
Couple different options on How To Play Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black On Guitar this if you want to take the exact same shape on the same string we can move that all the way down to the tenth fret again it’s the exact same thing right from a D minor to a G minor, I’m more of a fan of going to the lower G minor which is essentially pretty much the same shape except you don’t have your middle finger to hold down anymore so you can kind of use it to get this minor barre chord voice going on or another thing that you can do is to kind of get it like this which would get you in a non barre chord way to play this, but again we’re just gonna go three five five and then three all the way down. Okay that’s the G minor, it’s important that you get the third fret on the G string because that’s the note that makes it major happy and not back to the black that’s darkness right there. Right so we’ve got B flat to a, okay so again, the great thing about this shape is it’s the exact same shape for 75% of the song, the only way you have to change it is when you get to the G, you take your middle finger off and make it minor, okay which is sometimes easy to have been done that Eastern greeted minor barre chord but not impossible, something should have been working on it and then after that we can just move it to the six rooted on the E string B flat to A.
So the whole thing is D minor, G minor, B flat major, doing it with the higher D minor G minor sounds great and in that version of it you don’t even have to change your shape, just mold your hand into this claw and just kind of go around jump in from root. Next, we will look at How To Play Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black On Guitar with open chords.
Back To Black With Open Chords
Now let’s talk a little bit about How To Play Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black On Guitar with an open chord, if the barre chords are a little bit tricky for you, because you know we’ve all been there, you’ll get there eventually for sure but it’s always good to have different options on how to do it and it’s just a good lesson in alternate chord voicing’s in general. So that D minor like I said before one of the high E string, three on the B string, and two on the G string.
Now we’re really kind of aiming for the bottom four strings and then now for this G minor we’re actually gonna play it as, I’ll give you some options of G minor seven, this is actually an interesting one. Okay so a G minor 7 the way that I usually play it would be like this where we get the 3rd fret of the E string, skip the A string, 3 & 3 & 3. Okay now that’s still technically a barre chord, I said we were gonna do with Barre chords so if you just take a major voice like this move to the 3rd fret and then use either your thumb or your pointer finger, you know G minor 7 right here I know it doesn’t say minors on the chord chart, but any time you see a minor chord you can always replace it with a minor 7. Okay so you do it like this for the G minor the great thing about this is when you get to the B flat part you just do this right here, you just take the root right away and then now it’s very similar sounding, but without that G that makes it technically a B flat chord. Okay and then we can move this straight from flat to a, I guess this is kind of like an efficient way to do this in one spot D minor, G minor 7 flat.
So kind of a cool way to do it and really staying in one spot now again I kind of like a little bit of the flair of sliding around, I think you have a little more options when you use the barre chords you can inflect them a little bit, but you know what I teach their own is there’s a couple different ways to talk about doing it.
Now there is one other part of the song and it’s really kind of similar but it’s a bridge of sorts and it’s got a just D minor you kind of just strum and hold and then it goes to a B flat major seven and then an F major which is pretty cool and then back to A. Okay so again a lot of these chords you’ve already done before. We’re introducing a new chord and path and we’re turning that B flat and E flat major seven stuff that you’re gonna want to know, anyways so we’ll do them all open air D minor and then this is a very you know Spacey open part of the song, however you want to do it you can still the timing is the same if you want to kind of keep that vibe going throughout it, but after this instead of going to the G minor where we usually go, we’re gonna go to B flat major seven, one of my favorite chords ever; one A, three D, two G and three B.
The more you milk it the better it sounds. Right after this can go to F you do Barre chord after I just kind of like get in the middle of it, shake it, really feel it, and then end up on A. Let me go back to lift your pinkie up to make it an A7 for dramatic effect and then end How To Play Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black On Guitar on D minor.
Conclusion
So really great song from an all time kind of legend in my book. So let us know if you liked it and if you have any songs that you want us to get after, let me know in the comment section I’ll get back to you and in the meantime check out some of the other videos that I’ve done on the guitar control Channel and other great instructors too. So again hope to hear from you soon and I will check you out later. Thanks for watching How To Play Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black On Guitar.
