Shawn Mendes: Like To Be You

Free guitar lesson

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Summary: Like To Be You

This Shawn Mendes hit has a really cool fingerpicked guitar part that shows you a slightly different way to play through chord shapes, rather than your usual barre chord or open shapes. This lesson will stand you in good stead for creative songwriting for sure!

The Chords: The main loop

The chords are a little unusual looking, but really cool shapes. the basic chords are B minor, A major, D major and G major... But we use a very specific arpeggio throughout, utilising the D open string to great effect. The chords are as shown here:

The Rhythm: Fingerstyle

To get the very specific part correct in this song, you need to use your fingers with the picking hand. Simply follow along with Simone's instructions and remember to get that palm muting in there are well, to really make the song sing!



    Keep Learning: Fingerstyle!

    If you love the sound of this track but struggle with the arpeggio sections, you may want to take a look at our Travis picking course, where we introduce you to fingerstyle playing. It's a full course, and totally free (As is everything on the site). You can find it here: Travis Picking Guitar Lesson Course.

Ready to move on? Remember to check out every lesson in this unit first – then try the next unit...

Lost In Japan

This Shawn Mendes track is a great one to transpose from piano to guitar, as it gives us some really cool interesting guitar chords to play around with. Simone takes you through all the chords and the cool percussive groove that you can play through the tune.