Desperado Guitar Lesson with Multiple Strumming Options

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to be doing the Eagles Desperado. This is a great song. Let's get into the guitar lesson.

So this song is a little bit more late beginner, early intermediate. And the reason is because there's a lot of chords. So we're going to be going over the chords used in Desperado, as well as some of the transitions that you guys might want to be aware of when you're switching between these chords. So. So the chords that we're going to be using for this song, there's a lot of them. We have A seven, we have A minor seven, B minor, C, C seven, D, F sharp. There's a whole slew of them in here. And if you want to go pull up the chord chart on my website and put it side by side, you can do that. Laurenbateman.com now, the intro for this song starts out as G to G7, C to C7, G to E minor 7, and then A7 to D7 with a hold. So let's just go through this progression because it's going to get us through a lot of these chord changes right off the bat. So when we're going From G to G7, unfortunately, we do have to change the entire hand position. There is no easy way to go From G to G7 unless you're going to do a bar chord.

You could do G7, but I think the Eagles use open chords in this song. So my. I'm going to tell you to use the open chords here. The great thing, though, is that once we get to G7, going from G7 to C is really easy. It's just we're going to condense our fingers so that the shape is the same. It's just the strings are different. So we have G7 to C major, and then to go from C major to C7, we're just going to add the pinky on the third fret of the G string. So those four chords, we got G, G7, C major, C7. Okay. Then we go back to a G chord. Then we've got E minor 7. So the pinky would come down on the third fret of the second string. And then this A7 chord, I would play it with the second and third fingers. The reason I would do that is because it's a nice, easy transition into D7. For the A minor 7 down the road to be the same thing. First and second finger I would use. You don't even have to move the first finger. You can pivot right into D7. Nice easy chord change there. Now the last couple chords I want to touch upon is the B minor. So if you're not a huge fan of bar chords quite yet, you can use an easy B minor chord. It won't sound as nice as the full chord, but that is an option. But at this stage, I would recommend that you really give that B minor bar chord a good try for, for this song. It comes in every once in a while, but not a lot. So it's a great opportunity to practice that. The last one I want to talk about is the walk down going from G to this D, F sharp. Now you guys have maybe seen me do this a few ways in other videos. We're going to do it a little bit different here. I want you to make a full D chord on the bottom. And I'm going to use my thumb to grab that F sharp bass note. And I'm kind of muting the fifth string with my thumb. Not now. If you're a beginner, you don't really have the stretch in your hand to be able to do this. But if you are late beginner to early intermediate, your hand should be flexible enough that you can make a D chord on the bottom and then just roll that thumb over the top to get that bass note. So we're going to be going from G.

To D, F sharp. And then E minor. Okay. So that's the walk down we're going to be using in the song. So now that we've gone through a lot of the chords and some of the chord variations and finger positionings, what I want to do is give you guys some strumming options for Desperado. So each of these chords is two beats. All right, so if we go back to that intro G twice, G seven, two beats, C.

Okay. And that's kind of the easiest strumming pattern you could do is just two strums per chord. So since this is such a laid back song, that sounds great. Just even doing two chords, two strums per chord, that's awesome. But if you want to add a little bit of a spice, all you have to do is throw in a little up after that. So it would be down, down, up. And then you would switch chords.

Down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up.

So that's a great option if your chords aren't the fastest. But if you do have fast chord changes, this is probably the strumming pattern I would use. And I'm going to give you extra little Spice after this too. But it's going to be a 16th note strumming pattern. It's going to be 1, 2 and a 3, 4 and a 1, 2 and a 3,4. And that's going to be play down, down, down, up. So I'll show you right here again, using that intro, we're going to go to G. So it's going to be 1, 2 and a 3, 4 and.

A 1, 2 and a 3, four and a.

So you can just see by adding in that little 16 note, it adds a nice really cool feel and groove to this song. It is a ballad, so a little bit extra strumming goes a long way. You don't have to be too, too complicated. But there is a point in this song, you know, where I think things get a little bit more emotionally dynamic. So I want to give you the option for a two measure strumming pattern that you might want to consider later in the song. So after we get through this first desperado section, there's a section in the song where it goes, don't you draw.

The queen of diamonds Bo. She beat you if she's able.

So what we could do is add a little bit more spice in here. So that was the 16th note pattern. Here's what we're going to do. Listen to this.

So really cool thing happened on that G chord, the first four chords, the E minor, the B minor in the C. I just did the down, down.

Down, up down, down, down, up down, down, down, up, up, up, down, up, down, up.

So what's happening here is we have that C chord.

It's going to be down, down, down.

Up, up, up, down, up, down, up.

Down, down, down, up, up, up, down, up, down, up.

So it's going to sound like this.

Down, down, down, up, up, up, down, up, down, up.

So we have this walk down that's coming up too. So you could use it on that.

You know, the queen of hearts is always your best friend.

And be the fine things have been laid upon your table.

So it just adds a little bit more of emotional dynamic to the song. If you guys want to throw that in. It's also a little bit more of an intermediate strumming pattern. So give it a try if you guys are up for a challenge. So I'm going to jump in and do a desperado guitar play along. But before I do that, I just want to remind you guys to subscribe to the channel and turn on those notifications if you haven't already. This way. You'll see when I release more videos just like this one. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play this song actually all the way through because there are some dynamics. The ending here is a little bit different. And I think it's really good for you guys to just hear this song from the beginning to the end and have the opportunity to play through with me. If for some reason I'm playing too fast, you can use the settings cog below and slow this down even more. All right, so we're going to start at our intro on the G chord. And this is going to be our timing. 1, 2, 2, 3, 4. So intro.

Just two strums per chord. Right now, that's all I'm doing.

To G to a minor.

A7. Now hold the D7.

Desperado.

Why don't you come to your senses? You've been out riding fences.

So long now?

Oh, you're a hard one.

I know you've got your reasons These things that are pleasing and hurt you somehow.

Walk down.

Well, don't you draw the queen of diamonds boy, she'll beat you if she's able I know the queen of hearts is always your best bet.

Now it seems to me the five things have been laid upon your table. But you only want the ones you can't get.

With Desperado.

Oh, you ain't getting younger you're pain in younger you're driving you home.

And freedom.

Oh, freedom that's just some people talking. Your prison is walking in this world alone.

Walk down.

Well, don't your feet get cold in the wintertime? When the sky won't snow and the sun won't shine? It's hard to tell the nighttime from the day.

You'Re losing all your highs and lows. Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?

Desperado.

Why don't you come to your senses? Come down from your fences and open the gate. It may be raining.

But there's a rainbow above? You better let somebody love you let somebody love you? You better let somebody love you before it's too late.

Here's the outro.

Make sure to give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed this lesson and playing along with me, YouTube's gonna pop up a couple more videos over there. Make sure to go and check those out and hope to see you guys in a guitar lesson real soon.