Lauren Bateman teaches Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival using just three chords: D, A, and G. The lesson covers the verse progression, a four-count strum on D and two counts on A and G, and includes a play-along section to practice.
But don't go around tonight it's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise I hope you're.
A CCR fan like I am. And this is a great beginner song because it only uses three simple chords. And those chords are going to be the D chord, the A chord, and. And the G chord. And we're going to use these throughout the song. And we're going to keep it very simple so that you can start having fun with this song right now.
So there's two sections to the song, the verse and the chorus. So let's start off with our verse section and the strumming pattern we're going to use here. And I'm going to show you a different strumming pattern that you can use for the chorus. Now, because this is a beginner version of the song, we're just going to keep it very, very simple. So the chord progression, the order in which the chords are played is a D chord for four counts, and then we have an A chord for two counts, a G chord for two counts, and then a D chord again for two measures or eight counts total. So there's a lot of D in these verses. So if you need practice on that D chord, this is going to be a great song to work that out. So we're going to keep this very simple. Like I said, we're just going to do four down strums on our D chords. Okay. Because each one of those is a full measure. Four, four counts. When we get to the A chord, we're just gonna do two down strums. And when we get to the G chord, same thing. We're just gonna do two down strums. Keep it super, super simple here in the beginning. So we're gonna do one, two. Ready? And we got.
I see.
A bad moon rising 3, 4.
1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4.
1, 2,. 1, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, two, three, four.
Now, of course, I slowed it down a little bit just so you guys could hear the count. If we were playing it up to full speed, it would sound a little bit more like this.
I see a bad moon rising.
Ready?
I see trouble along the.
So what I would recommend for this verse is just get your counting down first. Take it slow. If you need to play it slow, like the way I did the first time, play it slow and then pick up speed. I know everyone wants to go really, really fast in the beginning, but it's better when you're learning about timing to go slow, get the timing down and then speed it up. So now let's talk about what we're going to do in the chorus section of the song. So the great thing about this chorus is we don't have any space split measures. Everything's going to be played for a full measure. But the chord progression does switch up a bit. So there's going to be a little bit more movement in our chords. So we have a double G, a double D, an a G, and a D D. That is the full progression for the entire chorus section. Now let's talk about a way we can spice up our strumming pattern just a little bit here. So the strumming pattern I'm going to show you for this section is very similar to what you were just doing. We're just going to add in one up strum. Okay. So it's going to sound like this.
So what am I playing? I'm going 1, 2, 3, and 4. 1, 2, 3, and four. And that's down, down, down, up, down, down, down.
Reason I put the up strum between the three and the four is because when you're a beginner, you sometimes have trouble changing those chords very quickly. And if you put an up strum after the four, it means you have to change your chords even quicker. So sometimes it's nice to put these up strums before the four. So if we were going to take this chorus section out and apply that strumming pattern, it would sound like this.
Don't go round tonight.
Cause bountake all night.
There's a bad mood on the rise.
So let's really focus in on this timing. Now I'm just going to do a quick playthrough of the verse and the chorus. Play along with me. If I'm going too fast, you can always slow down the settings. Cog down there to slow me down. All right, we're going to start right at the verse. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4.
I see a bad moon rising.
1, 2, 3, 4.
I see trouble along the way.
1, 2, 3, four.
I see earthquakes and lightning.
I see bad times today.
Here's the chorus. Ready?
Don't go around tonight Cause it's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise.
Now if you're a beginner to late beginner player and you really enjoy ccr, then I have a really amazing down on the corner lesson over here where I'm going to show you how to play that intro bass line step by step. It's a lot of fun. Go join me over in that lesson.
