Chords for My top 3 easy acoustic guitar covers - beginner friendly!

_ I have a list of three songs that I think are really good to pick up and learn a full version of early.
I think they're great for a lot of reasons.
I have a
list of criteria that I went through when I thought about all the songs that I knew and that I play.
For one,
they had to have easy chords _ and
they had to have
the same strumming pattern and chord progression throughout to keep things simple on the guitar because that is a big deal when you're starting out.
They had to be easy to sing because not everyone's a good singer, myself included.
It's [Cm] not easy to sing and play so they had to be easy on both accounts.
They had to be [C#m] popular when they came out and then sort of revisited and revitalized
[N] recently.
This helps to bridge the
generation gap because if you're playing like at an open mic or you're going to play a gig or you're doing a cover for YouTube
or something like that, you want to
play songs that people are gonna know and that you like too, obviously.
But it helps when the generation gap has been bridged by recent covers that make the songs popular again.
These songs all work really well on solo acoustic
but they can also be expanded upon with a full band setup really easily if you have a friend or two that you want to
play with.
_ These songs can all grow with you.
So as you get better at singing, as you get better at playing guitar,
you can do things with these songs that you couldn't do previously as your skills [G] increase.
So without further ado, the chords you'll need are your standard
[D] G, D, [Bm] _
E minor or E [Em] minor 7 or however you want to play [C] that and _
C add 9 or standard C chord, [C#] whichever you want to do.
So G, D, E [D#] minor, C, pretty standard.
That progression is used for thousands of songs.
You should [Am] absolutely know those chords.
And then I'm gonna throw in an A minor
also, a couple songs using A [D#] minor, two of the songs.
So the first song is
Working Class Hero.
Len put it out in the 70s and then
recently Green Day did a version of it that was really popular.
The chords [Am] are just an A minor and [A]
then [G] a G _ and
there is a one little spot [D] where there's a D chord.
_ _ _ So the pattern is gonna [Am] be A minor,
_ _ _ [G] G, _ [Am] A minor. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [D] One thing about this song with Tonight's is that [Cm] it's in 3, 4 or [N] 6, 8.
It's counted in 3.
So 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 as opposed to in 4,
which is most music, most songs you hear on the radio and stuff.
_ The part where there's a D chord is the second half or the second line rather of the chorus.
So it's normally you [Am] play your A minor pattern twice,
[G] _
G, [Am] A minor a bunch of times. _ _ _
[Cm] What you do [D] for the second line in the chorus is you [Am] play A minor, [G] G,
_ [D] D, [Am] A minor.
_ _ _ _ [D]
And [C#] that's the only part where it [B] changes.
The rest [G] of the song is just A minor [Cm] and G in that three pattern.
The strumming pattern [Am] I'm using is down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, [G] up, down, down, up, down, [Am] _
_ up, down, up, down, up, [D] down.
that you can just do [C#] down down up down up [D#] down down up down up for the whole thing
one thing you can do to make this a little more fancy if you have the ability
to do it it's not nothing too crazy but
it's just [C#] that what he does on [Am] the A minor is _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [D] you're plucking individual [A] strings so what he's doing is the
A minor by [Am] itself and then down up down up and then kind of a hammer on
_ you _ _ _ _ _ [D#] can do that on the A minor if you [C#] want
something else you can do to expand upon the song if you want but you can keep it simple as well
still sounds good without it
so the next [N] song is knocking on heaven's door Bob Dylan originally
the version I know and love the most I like Dylan's version obviously
and now I think I prefer it but knocking on heaven's door was covered by
Guns N' Roses in the 90s they put it out on one of their albums and it was
it was a big a lot of people know that version and not the old one oddly
I like both but that song is just [G] a G
_ _ _ [D] D _ [Am] A minor _ _ _
and [G] then a G
_ _ [D] _ _ _
_ [C] D C
you can use C add 9 if you want [G] to
and then just a down
down [D] up down up down
down up [A] down up down
[Am] down down up up down [G] down
down up down [D] up down
down up [G] down up down
down down up up down
down down up
[C#] this song is great I love this [D#] song for warming up and I've played it at gigs
both by myself _ and with a band I've also done a cover of this on
YouTube a while back it wasn't that good of a recording quality but I mean
this is a really good song I like it a lot and one of the things that you can
do with it to expand upon it and kind of make it a little more fancy is equal
again C add 9 you can throw in there instead of C you can lean on that as a
crutch if you're not comfortable with the C but what I use it for is an
alternate chord voicing for C so when I'm coming into [C#] the chorus or I'm
coming out of the chorus what I'll do is I'll play the C add 9 instead of the C
and then I'll kind of walk it down into the G for the next section of the song
so what I mean by [G] that is so I'm playing the C add 9 I'll _ _ _ _ _ _ _ do that so all [Gm] I'm
really doing oh I hammered on [E] I kind of hammered on to the [Gm] the 2 there in the
middle [C] _
_ _ _ and then I did [Em] like this [D] _ [G] _ _ _ _ [N] but I mix it in while I'm strumming so it's
[C] it's kind of subtle _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ so you can kind of hear it but it's not too pronounced [N] and
it looks like something's going on on your fretting hand there so people are
watching it looks a little more busy gives it a bit of an effect you can
also mess with the 8 minor similar to the way that we did with [G] working class
hero where if you're playing _ _ [D] _ _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [C#] you can just hammer on to one or both of those
strings I hammered them both just there you can [D] do one if you want another thing
that I do is [Am] I throw in throw _ _ _ _
[G] _ _ [D#] in that third fret on the high E string and just
grab it with my pinky now again this is stuff that you don't have to do but if
you can and you want to it'll add a little more flair not [N] necessary but
sounds cool so the last song _ is oh by the way I use it song as a warm-up
because it's super easy on vocals and I really like the part for vocal warm-up
so anyway nothing about that song wagon wheel is just it's well first of all
old crow medicine show they did a ways back they kind of there was a version of
a Dylan recording that was leaked and they used it in a movie and it was kind
of a big thing then old crow medicine show did it like 10 years ago they wrote
a full song for it because it was just a course that Dylan did then Darius Rucker
did it a few years ago so this song has been all over the place _ _ and popular
still I think today so the [G] chords are G _ _ [D] D _ [Em] E minor [C] C add [G] 9 there G _ D [D] _ _
_ [G] and C add 9 _ _ _
[D#] strumming patterns a down down up up down up _ the only time it changes is you
can you can mix it up at the end [D] of the pattern if you want but you don't have
to [C] I would do just a down down up up down up down up down up down up [G] if I wanted to mix it up
for the most part down down up up [D] down up down up up down up [G] very standard
strumming pattern and for this song see if you're not too great with vocals
right now and [C#] for a long [F#m] time [D#] this is how I did it I don't have a capo [C#] on here
normally there's a capo on the second fret for this song if you can't sing
that high you just leave the capo off it [D#] takes a whole step off of the vocals and
it makes it a lot easier on your vocals so you can do that actually get better
at singing slap a capo on that goes for any of these songs too if you want to
sing them a bit higher you can slap a capo anywhere on the fretboard give it a
different sound if you want to but for this song in particular leave the capo
off if you're not too keen on the vocals right now one thing you can do to add
some flair to the playing on the guitar is when you're playing your C [C] add 9
_ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ when you're coming [C] out of the _ last piece of the pattern going into a chorus or
coming out of a [D] chorus you can do that I'm [C] just lifting my index finger _ _ [G] _ _ on and
off of the second fret of the _ D string there yeah and that's it I mean
those are the three songs I really like these songs for easy _ full-blown [Fm] acoustic
[D#] _ covers again expand upon them do what you want with them they're great to
mess around with great for gigs do a cover video and let me know you know if
you put it up on YouTube or something like that but these are great to learn
great to learn as a beginner great to take out places so um yeah let me know
what you think in the comments if you maybe think these songs are too hard or
something or maybe if you have any other ideas for songs that you think are
better for this also if you want full versions of tutorials for each of these
songs I could do them but there are some good ones up there already just in _
guitar and Marty to name a couple guys who do these I can link to videos below
if you want that that are full versions for each of these songs but I can do one
too if you really want it also so thanks for watching consider liking the video
if you find this useful and subscribe if you want to keep up with my channel I
don't upload it too regularly but I plan on uploading more often in the future
and yeah that's it thanks for watching