In this guitar lesson Franco will be walking you through Come As You Are, by Nirvana. We'll take you through the classic riff, as well as all the chords and rhythm you need to perfect this song.
The main riff only uses the low E and A string, and this riff really does feel more like a bass line with all the chromatic notes. It is based around the F# note though, as this is the key centre of this track. We cant provide the tab, but here are all the notes we are using in the riff. As fro the right hand, just play downstrokes on the E string and upstrokes in the A string. Simple!
For the rest of the track we are using powerchords, which are super fun and easy to play. Here are the chords in the rest of the track. Notice that Franco plays the powerchords with his first and fourth finger, but you can do 3rd finger instead of fourth if you prefer!
the rhythm pattern loops over 2 bars, as you can see below. This means that you are doing thre first pattern on one chord, and the second pattern for the next chord. Here are those rhythm patterns.
The solo is super simple, just repeating the main melody of the song. The solo is all based around the pentatonic shape 2 in the key of F# minor, so if you know your pentatonic shapes, try to visualise that as you go through it. We can't show the tab, but here is that scale.
Ready to move on? Remember to check out every lesson in this unit first – then try the next unit...
This track is a brilliantly quirky grunge song that has plenty of rhythm changes and a wide range of power chord and open chord changes. It's great fun to learn, and once you have the structure together, you'll love playing along to the track!