Solo

Summary: Solo

This upbeat Euro-pop style track is an interesting song has a pretty cool guitar part, which sounds suspiciously midi based, but could well be a real guitar! None the less, it's good fun to learn and Simone has broken it down in to bitesize chunks so that you can learn it.

The Verse: 4 chord loop

Firstly, we need to add the capo to the second fret, then we are using 4 basic chord shapes: Am, G, Em & F. The chord shapes are as shown below:

Rhythm: Reggae groove

The rhythm pattern uses all off beats to create a reggae feel to the track. You can either strum these chords or use fingerstyle, but either way, you need to play on only the "and" beats, as shown below. Remember that you also need to stop the chord as soon as you've played it to create a short, impact sound. You do not want the chord to ring out.

The Chorus: Rhythm changes!

When we hit the chorus, we start to play the rhythm a little differently by hitting less notes, but with a different syncopated groove. It looks like this (remember that we coount this rhythm using 16th notes like "1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a".

The post chorus: C for Em

The only other section of the track that changes, is the post chorus where we change the Em for C major chord. The chords for this section are therefore:

Advanced version: fancy bit!

If you want to really challenge yourself, you can try and play the other guitar part, which uses triad chord shapes across the neck. These chord shapes look like this:

Keep Learning: Strumming

Many thanks for watching this video and visiting the website. If you want to really perfect your strumming skills, you may want to try our beginners acoustic guitar course where we look into strumming and the basics of strumming patterns. This is so important if you are to play more complicated strumming like in this video lesson. You can find it here: Beginners Acoustic Guitar Course. Give it a try!