Ten Iconic Acoustic Guitar Riffs (With TABs!)

1. Welcome!: Hi. My name is Jacob Lamb. I'm a musician and a teacher. In this course we're going to cover 10 iconic acoustic guitar riffs throughout history. These are of course riffs that are fun to play and will impress your friends. But most importantly, in every single riff there is something new we can learn about the guitar. By the end of this course you should feel comfortable sitting down around a campfire or in your friend's living room and just jamming out to some songs and really recognizable songs at that. Come on in and we'll start together. I can't wait to see you. 2. How Tabs Work: Now, before we start learning, it's really important that we understand how tabs work because we'll be using them throughout this entire course. Now, if you already know and understand tabs, feel free to jump onto the next lesson and we can start learning together. But if tabs are new to you, we'll learn them in just a couple of minutes. Tabs look like sheet music, except instead of the normal five lines with dots, there are six lines and these six lines are the strings of your guitar. Now, the lowest string right here is the thickest string of your guitar. If you're holding and looking at your guitar, that's the string closest to your face. The highest string is the thinnest string. Again, if you're holding your guitar, that's the one closest to the floor. We start with the thickest and move our way up to the thinnest string. Now, instead of dots like sheet music uses, we use numbers and these numbers are very simply the frets that we want to press down on that specific string. If I want to press the third fret on my fifth string, I'd put the Number 3 for the third fret on the fifth string, or the second to the most thickest. If I wanted to move that third fret to my thinnest string, well, I'd move it all the way up here to the top line. Now that would be the third fret on that string, that line. If I ever need to put two nodes at the same time, well, I just put them on top of each other. For example, if you know a D chord, now this is what it would look like in the tabs. If we hold a D chord down and we look at it in the tabs, we can get an idea of how those numbers are working on those strings. With an understanding of that, we can move on to our actual songs. Remember, some of the songs can be easier and some would be more difficult. Never get discouraged and quit. If you find a song too difficult, move on to the next one. You can come back to it later. These songs don't have to be taken in order at all. They're just in an order that I thought might be enjoyable, but you can jump around and learn whatever song you'd like first and if you're having trouble, try them on your next most interested in and come back to it later. Let's begin. 3. Banana Pancakes - Jack Johnson: Let's take a look at Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson. Now, this is a fun and lighthearted song, and we've got a lot of seven chords in here, A7, G7, D7. If you're not familiar with those, go back and take a look at another course where we cover seven chords on the guitar. But if you do know your seven chords, let's jump into this song. There's a little riff at the beginning, and then we'll move into our chord progression. Honestly, it's not that difficult. It's just four chords. I believe we can do this really quickly. To start, let's take a look at our riff. We're starting on the fifth fret of the thickest string, but we're going to slide up to the seventh fret. I'm starting on my five and I'm sliding and hitting 5 on the fifth string, coming back down to 7, 5 and sliding down to three. Let's pause right there. We've got a slide up and walking down. Take that nice and slow, then the open string and we slide from 3 to 5. We've come up to our first chord, that's our riff and then we've got a chord. Altogether, we'll pause right here and give you a chance to look at the tab and try it. We're working mainly between the third, fifth, and seventh fret. Now, our first chord is going to be an, A minor seven. Let's play, we can either play the bar chord version or we could play an A minor chord and take our ring finger off. I've got my riff and then my chord. Now I'm going to do the riff again, but this time going to end on the third fret, instead of sliding up to the fifth. I'll show you what I mean. Everything is identical, except instead of sliding up to the fifth like we did the first time through, we're going to land on my G. Then I'm going to play a G7 chord. Now again, there are two ways to play this so whichever one you know better and are more comfortable with. We've got the G7 shape here, or we've got the G7, that looks like a separated C chord. The big difference is instead of the third fret on the first string, we're playing the first fret. I've got a riff, an A minor seven, a riff and the G7. Let's try all of those together. Now, we're into where he's singing. Again, we're going to play our riff and it's almost identical. We're just going to come up to the seventh fret on that fifth string. Everything else is the same. Now, we get into the primary part of the song, we'll get comfortable with the intro, take your time, watch as many times as you need to but here we're at the main part of the song. There's a chord progression that plays through over and over and over, and it just works through four chords. To enter into that section, we're hitting the D7 twice. Again, if you're unfamiliar, it's like an inverted D and we're into our main chord progression. Let's get that part comfortable then we'll come back and look at the chords. Okay, we're looking at the chords now for banana pancakes. We've got four, we're playing a G7, a D7, the A minor 7, and the C7. All of those chord shapes should be on the screen. But we're going to play them with split picking, which means we're not going to play all of the strings every time we're hitting. Here's what we won't be doing. That's not bad if we're learning the chords. But for this song to make it sound like banana pancakes, we're going to hit the low note first, the root of our chord, and then the high notes. So root, the rest of the chord and the root, and the rest of the cord. Here's an example of what I mean. Now, take a look at my picking hand and we'll see how I'm aiming with that one string and then the rest of them. 4. Hurt - Nine Inch Nails (Johnny Cash): Let's take a look at Hurt by Nine Inch Nails, or you may know it by Johnny Cash. Here we're going to center around three cords. We have an A minor chord, a C, and a D. But we're going to play them a little broken up. For example, our A minor chord, I'm going to hit the first two nodes completely alone. I'll hit the first node, second node, and then strum the rest of them. For my C, I'm going to do the same thing. I'll hit the first two. Then the next two alone. Start back at the beginning. I'm hitting my fifth string, fourth string, second and third together. Then my fifth string again. It's the same pattern for the D. I'll hit the fourth string, third string, second and first string together. Then back to my fourth string. For these last two chords, we're ending in the same place we're beginning. Altogether. Now let's take a look at the course. The course is relatively easy. We go between G, A minor, F, back to G. All we're doing is down stroking eight times for each chord. Here's what the course sounds like. Let's try our two parts of the song together. First, the verse where we're breaking up the chords. Then the chorus, where we're playing each chord in the progression eight times. 5. Free Fallin' - Tom Petty: Next we're going to look at free-falling by Tom Petty. Now, we're going to play this song with a capo on the third fret, but if you don't have a capo, don't worry. There's a way to play it with the open strings as well. If you're not familiar, a capo is this little device right here. Now, this device holds down all of the strings for you so that you can play some chord shapes you're familiar with higher up on the guitar. Instead of playing my D right here, I can take a capo, place it on the third fret and play that same exact shape higher up. Now, this one is very easy whether you're playing with a capo or without. We'll start with the shape with a capo. It's very similar to a D shape so I've got my D. The change I'm making is I'm putting my pinky above the middle finger on the third fret of the first string. I'm playing between a D, putting the pinky down, going back, pinky D. I've just gone up and down. Now the biggest change is I'm playing here. Second fret of the fourth string, second fret of the third string, third fret of the second string, and the open first string. Altogether I'm playing D pinky down, down back to that shape. D, pinky, pinky D, and the new shape. Now, if you don't have a capo, that's completely okay. We'll take it off and we'll take a look at how we can still play in key even without the capo, except this time instead of a D-shaped, we'll be working around on F shape. So on my guitar, I'm going to come on the fourth string and I'll go three, then two on the third string and my first finger is going to bar the first fret of the first two strings. Now the string I'm going to change is going to be where the middle finger is, that third string, and I'm going to go this chord, put my pinky down above my middle finger, just like we did higher up when we had a capo. Again, come back down and then take our middle finger off. That's it. We're just changing these three nodes. 6. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd: Let's take a look at, Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. Now, this song has a lot of hammer-ons and we're moving between open strings and the second fret. Here's what I mean. If I look at my open fifth string, and the second fret and the open string of the fourth and the second fret, that's where we're hovering. We've also got this shape. Where our third finger and Pinky finger are going to be on the third fret of the first and second string. Right there. We're going to keep that exact shape and play around some notes. Let's take this song nice and slow. We're starting on the open fifth string, and we're going to hammer on to the second fret. Now, on the next string will also play the open fourth string and press down on the second fret. Let's just try getting that shape down. Now, once we've reached this note, we can put those two fingers on the third fret where we talked about before. We strum right here, so we have, just like that. One, 2, 3, 4. I'm going streaming down, up, up, down. Down, up, up, down. So far so good. Now from this position, we're going to hit the open third string, back to the second fret, back to the open fourth string. We can think of this like a riff, a chord, a riff, a chord, a riff, a chord back and forth. We have our riff and our chord, and a riff, and our chord. Now, this is exactly the same. We just don't have our first finger pressed down anymore. The first time we hit our chord, we played this. The second time we hit our chord we played this. Now we're going to repeat those two sections. Altogether we have this so far. Now, we come up to the third riff and chord. It's exactly the same. But we're starting this time with the third fret of the sixth string. Again, it's exactly like the first riff, but we're adding in a note at the beginning. Now we work our way down. This time we're going 2, 0, 2, 0. We'll take a look at this chord on the page. Same chord shape, we're including the fifth string in it. Now we're almost at the end. We're so close. But let's take a look at where we've come so far. Repeat, bring in that sixth string, and walk down. Now we come up again just like the first time. Lot of repetition. Walk down. We end by hammering on that second fret and ending on the G. Something that's going to be really helpful with this song is keeping an eye on the tabs. Make sure you've downloaded the tab sheet. Since this song is so repetitive with little variations between sections, it will be really helpful to see the notes written down. Let's take one more play through it really slowly. 7. Fast Car - Tracy Chapman: Let's take a look at Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. Now this song, we're going to use our fingers four instead of a pick, so we're getting used to finger picking. Now, the four chords this goes between is a C, a G, an E minor, and a D but we're going to be playing them in different positions on the neck. First thing we're going to do is grab the C with our third finger, and then we're going to pick with our two first fingers the two open strings, second and third string. I've got a C on the fifth string and an open second and third string. Now, all I'm going to do is put my first finger down and pick those two again, and then let go. I've got, that's what we're doing for C, isn't that easy? Now we have our G and it's arguably easier, we'll grab the third fret with our ring finger again but this time on the six string. With my pinky I'm going to grab the third fret of the second string and again, that open third string. Pick it all the sixth string and the top two strings, so together so thick and thin. Altogether now I've got my C and my G, one more time. Not bad, we only have two chords to go. Now for my E minor, I'm going to take my first finger I'm going to put it on the seventh fret of the fifth string that's an E note. I'm going to take my pinky and put it on the eighth fret of the second string now that's a far gap. I'm also going to take my first finger and again grab that open third string. I'm right right there seven open third, eighth fret. Now from this position everything is going to slide, my seventh fret will go to the fifth fret, and my eighth fret will go to the seventh fret. From here watch my fingers closely, so my first finger moved down by two frets from seven down to five, my pinky finger moved one fret from eight down to seven. We're here my fingers are really only one fret away from seven to eight, down here they're two frets away from five to seven. But that's how I'm playing the E minor and then right there on that D. Altogether I've got my C, G, E minor, and D. Now there's a fancy little trick if you want to touch it the third time through the progression, the third time through the progression just at the start of the song, so we do it once. When we come up to our E minor we can move our pinky to hit 10 and back to eight. We hit our E minor come to 10 and back down where it was, so it's just a quick trip up two frets. The same thing when we come to D quick step up one fret and back down. Let's see what that sounds like, keep a close eye on the third time through the progression. 8. Drive - Incubus: Next we're going to look at Drive by Incubus. Now, Drive is a song that uses four chords. We just need to learn four shapes and how we're going to strum them. With our first shape, we're going to be playing the open six-string. Our middle finger is going to go on the seventh fret of the fifth string. My first finger, will go on the fifth fret of the fourth string. My pinky is going to grab the eighth fret of the second string. It's okay if I hit the open first string as well. Now, the way I play these chords is that they're expanding. We start with the first note, maybe the first two notes. We build it until we're playing the full chord. For example, I'll play the sixth string, the first two, and then maybe jump into all four. You'll notice I hit that full chord three times, so 1, 2, 4 chords three times. For my next chord, I'm going to play it just twice. It's actually really simple. I've got my third and pinky on the seventh fret of the second and third string. I'll hit the open third string and then everything. I've got this building cord. Then that chord twice. Now strumming pattern is the same for the second half, for the last two chords, but the chords are different. I've got my first finger on the third fret of the fifth string, my ring finger on the fifth fret, or I could also use my pinky, and then my middle finger on the fourth fret of the third string. My next two strings will be open. Again, I'm going to build this chord, so I'll hit maybe the first, the second, and then the full chord. Altogether, I've got my first chord, building it up. Second chord twice. My new chord building it up. My last chord is an A7. The easiest way to play this chord is to play an A, a regular A chord, and take my middle finger off. I've just opened up the third string. In the end, I've got the second fret on the fourth string pressed down, and the second fret on the second string. Altogether, building hit twice. Building hit twice. 9. Time of Your Life - Green Day: [MUSIC] Time of Your Life by Green Day. Now, if you know your standard chords, this will probably be the easiest song to play on the list. There are four chords that we need. Those four chords are G, C, D, and E minor. We're going to split this song into three sections. We'll call them the verse, the pre-chorus, and then the chorus. In the verse, our chords go from G, to C to D, and we'll play through those twice. [MUSIC] Now, two things that we need. The first is a strumming pattern and the second is how we're going to separate the chords with our pick because we don't want to play them all together at the same time. First, our strumming pattern. We're playing down, down, up, up, down, up. You can separate that in half to compartmentalize it in your head. Down, down, up, and up, down, up. For example, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, for each chord. [MUSIC] You'll notice for the first chord we're playing it twice as long. We're playing through that strumming pattern two times. Now, the other thing we want to think about is how to split up the chord. Chords don't sound all too good if you play all of the notes all of the time. It's like a wall of notes hitting you. Something I like to do to separate my chords a little bit is when I'm strumming down, I'm actually hitting the first three notes of the guitar. [MUSIC] When I'm strumming up, I'm hitting the thinner three strings of the guitar. [MUSIC] That way, instead of hitting my listeners with a wall of notes, [MUSIC] I can separate my chords a little bit to give them more range. They're a little more dynamic. [MUSIC] Now, this strumming pattern follows into the pre-chorus. The pre-chorus is E minor, D, C, and G. Let's take a look at that using again our strumming pattern and separating the notes. [MUSIC] That's pretty nice. Now we come into the chorus. The chorus goes from E minor, to G, to E minor, to G, to E minor, to D, to G. Here's what that sounds like. [MUSIC] Now that last G of the chorus, we can actually think about it as maybe just being the first G in the verse again since it's the start of that progression. An easier way to think about it for some people might be to just erase it from the list of the chorus and just think about starting the song back over from there. [MUSIC] 10. Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin: This one here is a classic, Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. Now, Jury is still out on if you really will get kicked out of Guitar Center for playing this one. But it's a fun song to play and every guitarist needs to know Stairway to Heaven, so let's jump into it. Now to play this one, we're going to build a lot of chords. I'm going to start by putting my third finger, my ring finger, on the seventh fret of the fourth string. My first finger is actually going to bar the fifth fret of the next three strings. Now, this is one of those songs where we need our fingers. We can't have a pick because we need to hit the end two at the same time, the lowest and highest note. Once we've done that, we're going to work up the two middle notes. So two end notes, middle, middle, two end nodes, that's the third and second string, and then we'll hit the ends again. That's how a lot of these chords are working. We hit the two ends, the two middle notes, and then the two ends again. Keep that pattern in your head as we learn. We've got our two ends, middle notes, two ends, and then we change the ends. Our bottom note goes to the sixth fret, and our thinnest note on the first string goes to a seven. Now I have 6, 5, 5, and 7. This time I'll hit the two ends and play the two middle strings from the second and then the third and the ends. Now that can be confusing, but so far what we've got is two ends, third, and second, second and third. So far so good. We're going to shift our ending notes again, our two ends. The six here is going to drop down to five so we can bar all of those and seven will move up to eight. Again, hit our ends, second and third. Now you'll notice our shapes here, the lowest note is just moving down. Our highest note is doing the opposite. It's moving up, so it's going. One note moving down, one note moving up, and then the two middle notes are staying consistent. Now our next shape is actually coming down to a D. We know that one pretty well. So all together. Cool. Now, our last finger-picked chord here is going to be an F shape. We've got third fret on the fourth string, second fret on the third string, first fret on the second string, and then an open first string. This one's a little different. After we play the two ends and we walk down, we're just going back and forth, up and down, and if we'd like to count exactly how long that is, we can count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Pretty good. Now, to finish, and then we'll look at it all together, To finish this song, we play an A minor, but it's an A minor, first of all, without the first finger, and then with the first finger, the full A minor chord. Here's our riff all together. Now if we'd like to loop it, we're going to hit the open fifth string, third fret on the fourth string, second fret, and then we can repeat. Let's run through this riff twice with that little joining riff right there. Nice and slow. 11. Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles: Now we're going to learn here comes the sun. There's a little riff for the course that we're going to learn. Then we'll take a look at the three chords for the verse, which is really simple. First, we'll look at the riff, and I know that this centers around a D, a G, and an E minor chord. Our goal are to play these chords along with the notes of the melody, which might sound a little tricky, but we can do it if we put our minds to it. Our melody goes like this. We need to work that melody into the chords we're already playing, which really actually isn't that difficult. When we play our D, we're already holding down most of the notes that we need. The only change we need to make is to take our middle finger, lift it off, and put it back on. Already we're making good progress. Let's do that again slowly. Now, our next note is just the note we're already holding this third fret of the second string. Altogether. Next part we can focus on single notes. That's the second fret of the first string, third fret of the second string, the open first string, and the second fret, again back to the start. We've got, one more time. Now our next chord, we need to reach a little bit. We've got a G. I'm going to put my middle finger on the third fret of the thickest string. The difference here is that I'm going to grab this third fret of the second string with my ring finger, and my first finger is going to get that second fret of the first string. It's a bit of a stretch. But again, same thing. First finger off, on, and then that third fret of the second string. Let's take a look at all of that together. Now, we move on to the E7 chord, which we're going to play like this. We've got our middle finger on the second fret of the fifth string, our first finger on the first fret of the third string, and our pinky is going to go on the third fret of the second string. We're just going to hit the open first string and the third fret of the second string again. I'm playing my chord. After I play the chord, I'm just going to hit that third fret on the second string. One more time. Now we're almost at the end, but let's take a look at what we've got so far. Here's the last part here. Coming back to a D, taking our middle finger off, and hitting the third fret of the second string. You can see there's a lot of repetition here. This part here, if you'd like to include it. We're just going to slide up on the third string from the second fret to the fourth fret and grab the third fret of the second string with our middle finger. Now, we're working around just changing what note we're playing on the third string. I'm sliding up and working up; third string, second string, first string, and moving this fourth fret to the second fret. Same thing but opening up my string and putting it back down. Fourth fret, second fret, open string, second fret. Then finally 3, 2, 0, and second fret of the third string. That may seem like a lot, but again, we've got the tabs in a PDF and we can take it nice and slow. Let's listen to the whole thing together. Now, if you've made it this far, you'll be encouraged to know that the verse is really easy. We've just got three chords; a D, a G, and an A7. Let's give this a listen. We're strumming down, down, up, up, down, up. We did the same strumming pattern for Good Riddance by Green Day. Let's take a listen to it nice and slow with that riff at the start. 12. Blackbird - The Beatles: It's time to learn Blackbird by The Beatles. Now, this song has a lot of changes and so watch this video over as many times as you need to. Keep a close eye on the tabs. But we do have an anchor. You'll notice in the time that throughout the entire song, we have the open third string between the cores and that's consistent. That never changes. The rest of it though, we're working up and down all over the neck. We're just going to have to take these one at a time and work our way through the progression bit by bit. First thing to notice is that we always have two notes and then the open third string, two notes, and the open third string, two notes, open third string. We're always keeping to that pattern. Now, let's take a look at what we're playing. The first two notes, we have the G note, so the third fret on the sixth string and the open second string. This is another song we're going to do with our fingers rather than a pick. We have that middle, the open third string. These two, open third string. Next we're moving to the open fifth string and pressing down the first fret of the second string and then playing that open third string again. Next we have the second fret of the fifth string and third fret of the second string, and then back to that open third string. Now we have three shapes, one, two, three. Let's try that again. Now we're taking our hand and we're shooting it up to the 10th fret on the fifth string. The 12th fret, all the way up to the 12th fret on the second string and that open third string. So again, we're hitting two at the same time, middle string, one, two, two at the same time, middle string, one, two. Let's take a look at that altogether. So far so good. It's hard, but when you get that section down, we'll call that the first section, let's move on to the next one. Here in the second section, we're going to work our way up the next slowly. We're going to start on the third fret of the fifth string and the fifth fret of the second string, and of course, our open third string between them. Now we're going to shift our hand around left and right. We have those two. Now we're moving to the fourth fret on the fifth string and the third fret on the first string. Then, of course, our trusty, open third string. Now slide that up to the fifth and seventh fret. Fifth fret on the fifth string, seventh fret on the second string, and our open third string. Now we're moving the same way here, from here to here. We're doing the same thing from here to here. From 5-7, were playing sixth fret and the fifth fret. Altogether. Take one more look at that, and we're landing on the seventh and eighth fret. Let's try it all together so far, there is a lot, but let's take it nice and slow, go section by section, and we'll see if we can get this whole part down together. Perfect. Now from here, we're going to take our seventh fret that the first finger is on and just drop it by one. From here, drop it by one. That's great and we're going to call that the end of the second section. Second section. When we have those two sections down, let's go and take a look at the third section, three of four. We're halfway there, I would say. On to the third section of this song. Now we're playing five and seven and seven and eight. Fifth fret on the fifth string, seventh fret on the second string, and our trusty open third, up to the seventh fret and the eighth fret. Not too bad. Then we're coming down to the third fret on the fifth string, fifth fret on the second string. We've got, I like it so far. Then we take our top note, which is on the fifth fret right now, and drop it to four. Changing it from major to minor. We're going to call that our third section. Let's take a look at what we've got so far. All together. Walking up. Drop that lower note. Then drop the higher node. We're almost there. We are moving this shape down a fret, so we're on the second and third fret. Then the open fifth string, second fret of the second string. We've just gone. We're in the very last section, we're into the fourth section by now. So far we've just done. Move it down, move everything down a fret, open up that fifth string. Now we've just got open fourth and third string. We're pressing down the first fret on the second string and we end exactly where we started. That's a lot. Let's take that very slowly. Here's the first section. The second section. Third section. Last section. One more time, a little bit faster. 13. Final Project and Congratulations!: You've done it. Congratulations on making it to the end of this course. Some of those riffs definitely weren't easy. But we can take them nice and slow and always go back and watch videos as many times as we need to. Maybe in the future too you can come back and these songs will seem easy to you. As a final project, pick the progression or the riff here that you enjoyed the most. Maybe you can pick one you found the easiest or even one you found the most challenging, and then record it however you're able. Whether it's just audio or you record video too. You can share it in the projects section or the final project community room. If you're a little camera or recording shy, you can just pick the riff and type it out and then share how you did with it. If it was difficult or easy, the things you struggled with the most or what you really had fun playing. If you have any questions or comments, you can always reach out to me at jacob@lamblessons.com or see more courses at lamblessons.com. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you.