Lauren Bateman's YouTube guitar lesson for Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild." The tutorial teaches a simple, beginner-friendly arrangement built largely around E minor eighth-note strumming (often palm-muted) for the intro and verses (8 measures each), a bridge that uses G and A (each two beats) followed by an E major with prescribed strumming patterns, and a chorus progression (E major → G → A → E). Key specifics: the intro/verses stay on E minor, the bridge strum patterns are given (G/A use down-down-up; E major uses down-down-up-up-down-up), there is a 22-measure instrumental section that remains on E minor, and Lauren references a downloadable chord chart on her website.
Chapters
Hello and welcome to my easy version of Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild. Very, very cool song. It's a fast song, requires a lot of eighth note strumming that we're going to use in this song. If you know how to do palm muting, this song sounds really great with some palm muting on the verse sections. So let's talk about that. This song, the intro and the verse is mostly an E minor chord played as eighth notes. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 all down strums. 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And if you have an electric guitar and you put a little distortion on, this would sound cool. All right, so if you can do palm muting, awesome. It'll sound more like this.
One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and 1 and 2. This is more the speed you're gonna want to play at. So that is what it would sound like with 8th note palm muted strumming. So this intro is 8 measures of E minor and then the verses are 8 measures of E minor. So really, really simple song. We get to stay on E minor for a very, very long time. Super awesome. So if I just did the verse real quick, it is get your motor running.
Head out on the highway.
Looking.
For adventure and whatever comes my way.
1, 2, 3, 4.
And we come into the bridge.
So the next section of this song is the bridge and we're going to switch up the strumming in this part of the song a little bit. So we're going to start with a G chord and an A chord and those two chords split a measure. So each of them is going to be two beats. And then we follow that up with an E major chord. So if you haven't gone and gotten the chord chart for this song, you can download it from my website, which is laurenbateman.com and then you can follow along with exactly what I'm talking about. So this G chord, the way we're going to play that, we're going to switch up the strumming pattern here. And the strumming pattern is going to be down, down, up. So 1, 2, and. And then the A is also going to be down, down, up, three, four. And so it's going to be down.
Down, up, down, down, up.
So we have G first. Down, down, up, A down, up. And then the E major chord is going to be down, down, up, up, down, up. So it's G, A. Down, down, up, up, down, up, down.
Down, up, down, down up, down, down up, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up. One, two and three, four. And one, two and four.
And that's our bridge section. And then after that we go right back into the verse with the palm muted E minor. And then we have another bridge. And after that bridge we've got a chorus which is going to be E major for two measures, G major for two measures, an A, A G, and then E again for two more measures. And this I would play again is all eighth notes. I don't think you really have to palm mute this one if you don't want to.
Like a true nature's child we were born Wanna be wild we could climb so high Never wanna die.
And on that last E, we're gonna strum it and we're gonna hold it out. And then we've got our next section, which is the born to be wild part, which we also hold Born to be Wild.
And that's just E and D, E.
So if I go through this whole chorus section, it's like A true nature's.
Child we were born Bonna be wild we could climb so high I Never wanna die.
1, 2, 3, 4. Born to be wild.
Bo be one.
And that's that section. And you'll notice when I'm doing these down strums, I'm not strumming the whole chord when I hold the chord. When I strum to hold the chord, then I strum the. In all six strings or the full number of strings you would strum for each chord. But when I'm doing the palm muting or just the full eighth notes, I'm really only getting the bottom two or three strings for each chord. So after that we've got this really long 22 measure instrumental that just sits on E minor. So that part's gonna get pretty boring for you. Or maybe you're gonna be excited because you're not switching chords if you're a beginner. So after that we've got another verse and then we have another bridge and then we have another chorus section. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna go through a verse abridge. I'm gonna start that Smoke and Lightning. So I'm gonna do the verse, the bridge and then the chorus so that you can hear all of the different sections. So let me start at that. So second verse, Here we go. 2, 3, 4. I like smoking lightning.
Heavy metal thunder.
Wrestling in the wind.
And the feeling that I'm under.
Yeah diamond gonna make it happen in the world that I embrace Fire all the guns at once and explode in space like a truth Nature's child We were born Born to be wild we can climb so high I never want to die.
Born to be wild.
Born to be wild.
And then you go right back into E minor after that. So there you go. That's Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild. Not too, too complicated. The parts that make it more like a beginner intermediate type song is that we're switching between different chord. Not different chord progressions, but we're switching between different strumming patterns on some of the chords. And it's a very fast song. And for you to do those eighth notes very quickly can sometimes take a lot of practice. And also palm muting would be ideal for the verses on this song if you can do that, because it sounds really cool.
Which is a little bit more of an intermediate technique. But if you can't do that, you can just play open strings. It'll sound perfectly fine. But that's why it's a little bit more of an intermediate song, just because we're mixing up the strumming patterns a little bit. But the chords themselves are pretty simple. They're all open string chords, so they're. They should be in your toolkit, hopefully at this point. If not, I would go learn the chords you don't know, practice them really hard. Play along with this song and you'll be a pro in no time. So good luck and I will see you in the next video.
