Easier Desperado Guitar Lesson with Full Playalong!

Hey guitar enthusiasts, Lauren Bateman here, and we're going to be doing a simplified version of Desperado by the Eagles. This is such a great song. The downside is it uses a lot of chords. It does have some bar chords, so in this version I've eliminated all that for you to simplify it so that you can play this song even faster because it is such a great song. So we're only going to need 7 chords, okay? So let me tell you what those are. It's going to be a G chord, a C chord, an E minor chord, an A7 chord, and a D7 chord. But if you don't know those and you only know A major and D major, that's fine. Same with A minor 7. If you don't know A minor 7 and you only know A minor, no problem, play A minor. And the last one is going to be a B minor chord, which is a bar chord, but I'm going to show you a fix for that if you don't know how to play bar chords just yet. Now before we get into playing the song and we're on the chords, I want to talk about some pivot points that are going to make transitioning between these chords easier. Okay, this is what I do in my 7 Level Guitar System. I show people pivot points so that they can make their chord changes a little bit easier, a little faster. Let's start there. So there's a couple little lines I want to go through, and they're little 4-chord sections. So one of it is a half measure of G to a half measure of E minor to a half measure of A7. To a half measure of D7. And when I say a half measure, what that means is it's going to be 2 beats or 2 strums per chord. Okay, so if you play a regular G chord, it doesn't really matter if you use your 3rd finger or your pinky, that doesn't matter to me. What we're going to do is we are going to pivot from the G chord, leave our 1st finger in place, to the E minor. Okay, this leaves us set up for our next chord, which is going to be A7. So all you have to do is lift up your 1st finger and put your third finger on the second fret of the B string. That gives us our A7. And then to get to D7, we're going to lift both of these fingers up and move them down one string each, and then put our first finger on D7. Okay, so if I go through that again, it's G, flip into E minor, shift that one here, flip into the A7, and then shift these down to go to D7. Okay, so that's the easiest way to rotate through those chords. All right, the less fingers you have to move, the faster you can go. Uh, the next one is going to be E minor. Actually, we start on a G again, so we're going to be going from G, sliding right back into that E minor. Same thing here, A7, and then the next chord is going to be A minor 7. So the second finger stays in place, The first finger comes to the first fret on the B string, and that's our A7. Now our first finger is already in place for the D7, so you just need to move the second finger down, third finger on the bottom string, second fret. Okay, so let me work through that again. So we're starting on a G chord, we are rotating into the E minor. Okay, we're lifting our first finger, putting our third finger down for A7. Leave the second finger in place, lift the third finger. First finger goes to the first fret on the B string for A minor 7. And then all you have to do is shift the second finger down, put the third finger in place, and you've got D7. Okay, so you can see we use these pivot points to help us know what fingers to move, what fingers not to move, which ones to leave in place, and to make it easier transitioning. And like I said, if you don't know the 7 chords, just going to a D chord is perfectly fine as well, or just playing an A minor chord is also perfectly fine for this lesson. So now that we've talked about the chords, the next thing we got to talk about is the strumming, okay? How we're going to play this song in time with a cool rhythm. Now, the thing about this song is it is a nice even kiltered song, so it gives you plenty of time. We're not in a rush here, and you can really keep the strumming simple, all right? So I'm going to show you 3 different strumming variations, easiest to hardest, and you can choose which one works best for your playing style and what speed your chord changes are at. All right, so this song, if you're really good at playing your chords cleanly, you can really do 4 strums per chord or 2 strums for those split measures.

So if I start with the first verse here, be desperado, why don't you come to your senses, bent out riding fences. For so long now.

So you can see, just a simple strum. That's about as simple as you can get it other than doing whole note strumming. But what we're doing, there's 4 beats per chord except for the ones that have the brackets. There's going to be 2 beats per chord. All right, so if you see a regular chord, it's going to be 4 strums: 1, 2, 3, 4. And if you see chords in brackets, it's going to be 1, 2 on the first chord 1, 2 on the second chord. All right, so that's the easiest strumming pattern. Just 1, 2, 3, 4, all downs. 1, 2, 3, 4. All right, that is the simplest strumming pattern, and it actually works really well for the song because of the speed at which it's played. It's a ballad, we're not trying to rock out here, so it's got room to breathe. The next step up from that would be adding in an up strum in between. So it would sound something like this. It would be 1, 2, and 3, 4, and 1, 2, and 3, 4, and play down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up. So here how that sounds over that same section, it's gonna sound like this.

Desperado, why don't you come to Senses, man, I'll ride in fences so long now.

Okay, so on those split measures, we're just doing a down, down, up on the first chord and a down, down, up on the second chord. Okay, and you can see it just adds a little bit more to the song, but because of those up strums, your chord changes have to be that much faster. Faster. Okay, so that is kind of the next level. And the final level, which is the one I like to use when I play this song, uh, incorporates what we call a 16th note. A little bit faster, a little bit more advanced. Your chord changes really, really have to be up to speed for this one, but I think it makes the song sound really nice. So if you just want to practice the strumming with me now, let's give it a try. So we'll be on a G chord, and the timing of this is going to be 1, 2, and a 3, 4 and a 1, 2 and a 3, 4 and a— and that is played as down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up. So it'll sound like this: 2, 3, 4, 1, 2 and a 3, 4 and a down, down, down, up, down, down, down. You try. Down, down, up, down, down, down, down, down, down. So if I put that over the same section, it's gonna sound like this. Ready? 2, here we go.

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses? You've been outriding fences for so long now.

I think it works great. I think it works great. But just know that first strum, that super simple strum, also works really well for this song. So if you're still at the beginner stage, you're not that fast with your chord changes, that's okay. Use the simple strum and you can work your way up to the more difficult strumming patterns. Now before I show you the little cool intro section and we do a little playthrough, I want to make a note of something else you can do in this song to spice it up a little bit. So there are some parts of the song where we go from a G chord to an E minor chord, and you'll hear it because there's some piano in this song. So you're going to hear what we call a walk down. It's going to sound like this.

Well, don't you draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy.

So it's kind of this walk down of Okay, and a walk down is we're just playing notes in a scale in a descending order. So we're going from a high note to a low note. In this case, we're going G, F sharp, E minor. Okay, so we have our G chord, then we're gonna move our second finger out of the way, and the first finger is gonna come up and touch the F sharp note. Now I am muting— if you're like, oh no, I'm muting the fifth string, I'm also muting the fifth string, that's okay. So it's going to be down, down, up, down, down, up, and then we end on the E minor. Okay, so if I put that in context of the song: The things that are pleasing can hurt you somehow.

Why draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy?

All right, and this happens multiple times throughout the song. So if you want to add that little spice in, it makes the song just sound a little bit cooler, a little bit fancier. It makes you sound like a really, really good guitar player. But now we're going to move on to the moment that some of you have been waiting for. How do I play that fun little intro? Okay, it's played on a piano, but I'm going to show you two levels of how to play that. The first one is just going to be single notes, and then the next level is going to be mixing single notes with chords. Okay, and that's kind of how I teach when I do my courses, is like We start at one level and we build on it. And if you don't know who I am, my name is Lauren Bateman and I specialize in teaching older adults, ages 50 plus, how to play guitar, have fun, take songs like this, simplify it a bit, and make it accessible to you even if you're just getting started. Okay, so this intro, if you just play the single notes, even if you're a beginner, you should be able to do this no problem. All right, so we're going to be working in the 3 frets here, the first 3. So if you don't know yet, these blocks are called frets. And this is the 1st fret, 2nd fret, 3rd fret. And we're gonna be starting on the open B string. And that open B string means I'm just not playing anything with my fretting hand. All right, and we're gonna pick down on that B string, okay? I'm gonna use my 3rd finger on the 3rd fret of the B string and then play it open again. So the first 3 notes are all on the B string.

Open, 3, open.

And then after that, The 4th note is going to be the open E string. Okay, so it's going to be open, 3, open on the B string, and then come up to the high E string, open. And then we're going to come back to the 3rd fret on the B string, open B string, and then open G string. Okay, so that first part of the song is Okay, let's try that one more time. Ready? 1, 2, here we go. Okay, now we're gonna move up again to the D string, and we're gonna start on the 2nd fret. And I'm using my 2nd finger here. We're gonna play the D string, then we're gonna play the open G string And then we're gonna play the D string again. So it's 2, open, 2, D string, G string, D string. When we come back down to the D string, we're going to just move that finger down 1 to the 2nd fret. All right, so it's— and then lift your finger and play that string open. Okay, the open G string. So those first 5 notes are— okay, now we're going to bring our 1st fret to the, um, D string. Okay, and then the 3rd fret on the A string. So if we take that from the top, it's Okay, let's try that again from the top, very, very top. It's going to be— all right, so that's where we are right now. The next note, we're going back down. We're kind of repeating what we did a little bit in the beginning. Okay, so it's going to be that open, 3, open, open, high E, 3, open, G. So it's the first thing we played already, so you already know how to play that. So the last line, we're gonna have the 2nd fret on the G string, and it's gonna be 2, 2, open, and then we're gonna strum a D chord, and then it ends on a D7. Okay, so if I take that whole thing from the beginning, it's going to sound like this very slowly. So that is the intro with the single notes. Now if you want to add chords over it, we're playing the same thing, it's just we're adding chords in specific spots. So we would start by strumming a G chord. Okay, so this is going to be a G6 chord. So we're strumming a G chord, but we need that high melody note, that high E, so we're just going to let that ring So the first line, we just basically have 2 G chords. We're gonna strum. Okay, now we're moving to a C chord and then a kind of a C minor 6 chord. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna move the second finger down, our first finger is gonna come to the first fret on the D string, and our third finger is gonna come to the third fret on the A string. All right, so we got a kind of ugly sounding, and then you're gonna have to lift up that second finger. Okay, so just from that C note, it's— so just in that first section, it's gonna be a C chord. Okay, and I'm not strumming, not strumming the full chord, I'm just kind of strumming the bottom 3 or 4 strings. So that's this next part. And then we have back to the G chord, same thing as we did in the beginning except moving to an E minor chord second. So it's going to be G. Now we have an Asus2, which is going to be second and third finger on the middle two strings, okay, second fret. Okay, you're gonna strum that, hit the 2nd fret on that, um, on that G string. And then you're going to hit the open string, and then we have D chord, D7. All right, so let's take that one more time from the top. Open, G6, C chord, and then we're going to switch to that C minor, uh, 6. Okay, back to G chord. E minor here. Here's our Asus2. And then end on D7. So there you go, that's what you can throw in front of the song to get started, whether you're going to do just the single melody or you're going to do the chords and the melody, whichever you choose. Do that. What we're going to do next is we're going to do a playthrough. All right, so we're going to put this all together, but before we do, there was one chord that I told you I was going to show you a fix for, okay? And that is the B minor chord. So a lot of the song we are transitioning from an E minor chord into a B minor bar chord, right? If you cannot play a bar chord, it is okay. Just play a B power chord. A B power chord is your first finger on the second fret of the A string, your third finger on the fourth 4th fret of the D string and your pinky right below it on the 4th fret of the G string. And it's okay, just let it ring out. Try to just hit the top 3 strings, but if you hit all the strings, it doesn't really matter for this song. It just makes it playable for you. Another tip, okay, is you could, if you remember, play your E minor chord with the 2nd and 3rd fingers, because guess what? You can just slide that finger now in place for this B minor chord. So it'll sound like this.

Don't you draw the Queen of Diamonds' bar. She'll beat you if she's able.

So you see, it sounds good. It sounds good without you— if you can do the bar chord, awesome. If you can't, doing that's gonna be totally fine, okay? No one's gonna yell at you. I'm certainly not. Make it easier for yourself if you can. And now, if you're ready, let's do a playthrough. All right, we're gonna take it from Desperado, right there on the verse. And we'll go nice, slow, easy, even kilter. I'm going to be doing down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up. But if you're just doing 4 strums, whatever works for you. And if I'm still going too fast, you can use the settings cog to slow me down. 1, 2, 3.

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses? You've been outridin' fences so long now. Oh, you're a hard one. I know you got your reasons. These things that are pleasing and hurt you somehow. Well, don't you draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy. She'll beat you if she's able. You know the Queen of Hearts is always your best bet. And it seems to be some fine things have been laid upon the table, but you only want the one You can't get desperado. Oh, you ain't getting no younger. The pain and your hunger are driving you home. And freedom, oh, freedom, well, that's just some people talking. Your prison is walking through this world alone. What, don't your feet get cold in the wintertime? The sun won't shine, the sun won't shine. It's hard to tell the nighttime from the day. When 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.

And if you make a mistake like me and forget the words, just keep playing, all right? That's the key for learning a song, is even if you make a mistake, try to play through those mistakes. You'll learn a lot more from doing them than stopping and starting all the way from the beginning. Now, if you're a huge Eagles fan, go check out my Take It Easy lesson right over there. Another great song that's very accessible to beginners and a lot of fun to play. Go watch that video right now.