Free Fallin isn’t the easiest guitar song to play but it is absolutely worth dedicating the time and practice to learn.
Hey, I’m Jimmy Dillon with Guitar Control, back with some acoustic stuff great lessons on classic songs this is some easy strumming stuff which anybody can get into and have fun with this is a Tom Petty song we follow one of my favorite licks he’s just so great writing really simple easy strawberry stuff that is also kind of sophisticated in its own way.
This one I’m going to show you a form of the chord of G which I’ve shown you before but it’s worth checking out so we all know this gene and we play many different way barre in different ways but if you played this song correctly with your pinky under on the high E- string 3rd fret third finger, 3rd fret B-string and then your regular position on your G.
Now what’s cool about this particular song I think especially if you’re someone who’s just starting out on guitar even if you’re more advanced is by moving the first two fingers just one string down, you get to a C, see how I’m doing that and back to your G and then just go to a plain old D. This is three chords to record one two going to love them and here’s how it sounds when you strum, here’s the strumming pattern, so what’s really great about this is because of all the open strings that are ringing out. By the way this is one pattern of moving forward you can utilize in many different songs you’ll find if you hunt around my songs a lot of folk, folk, rock, songs have that change in it so the way the song goes as far as this pattern it just repeats the same thing over but dynamically it does change now when I say that what I mean is the way you attack the strings it’s a little bit tricky the way he moves there you’ll notice I kept my pinky on that D that time it’s not one or the other you can move it around but I’m doing a straight a decoy but I’ve got my pinky on the G note through front of the high E and so I just go like this and then to the D and then lift your second finger up and let the high E bring out let me do that in slow motion because this is although this is simple song it only has three chords in it if you can learn these other little parts make the whole thing more interesting and make it flow better so once again all down strokes on that so let’s put that together and see what it sounds like you to get really free without me move around as your life now what else happens in that song is even though it only has three chords dynamically there’s a little tightens down in a certain part and I’ll show you how that’s done.
Now this is a little bit more of advanced technique but if you’re a beginner don’t worry about it because you can just learn this that’s pretty doable isn’t it just an easiest trim of this feel that kind of sway I’m going to show you lastly one thing and by the way as I always mentioned I go into depth on all these songs on my acoustic products so come back and visit me and you’ll see me but a lot of you know connective tissue a little when you get to that right here we’re just going to teach you the basics and what happens is Mike Campbell is one of my favorite guitar players plays with the Heartbreakers he kind of likes to mute the strings this is real common in electric music but also acoustic got across the tension road now so on so what am I doing there I’m laying my right hand this part of the right hand on my palm and I’m kind of palming the strings but not all the way so it ends up sounding like as opposed to if you if you muffle it and kind of mute it in different degrees you can get a lot of dynamic range so usually that happens in a maybe like a third verse what we call a breakdown verse in this case you Oh you so that’s kind of a mini course on free falling and again if you’re a beginner you know I’m really approaching a lot of kind of easy strumming songs that aren’t that difficult to do but it’s still fun and effective and you can do with your friends or at a party or whatever and acoustic guitar is just so great for that you can take it anywhere to the beach to the campfire you know in front of a fire or whatever you know it can be romantic it can be cool I just mainly want to impress on you to not too hard on yourself if you can’t do all of it at once just that’s the beauty look you’re super so my mission is to get you to have more fun and relax into it and really enjoy playing acoustic guitar so I hope you enjoy this lesson.
Keep up the practice and keep honing your skills with our lessons and soon you’ll be jamming like the best of them.
We’ve compile a step by step guide for how to learn chords on guitar if you need help mastering the basics needed to successfully play this song.
