Lauren Bateman demonstrates how to play Tom Petty's 'Free Fallin'' using simple D-based chord shapes with a capo on the third fret. She teaches the D chord and its variants (Dsus2, Dsus4), explains a two-measure strumming/rhythm pattern using downbeats and upbeats, and walks through the intro, first two verses, and chorus with playthroughs and counting guidance.
Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here, and I'm going to show you how to play Tom Petty's Free Falling using three very, very simple chords. Technically, it's one chord. I'm going to show you what I mean about that in a minute. But before we get started, I want to make sure you have a capo. We're going to put a capo on the third fret of the guitar. We're going to start right there.
So what we need is a D chord, okay? Very, very popular chord. And it sounds like this. When you have the capo on your guitar, it's a little bit brighter sounding. And now, just so you know, if you've never used a capo before, we're going to play the chords relative to the capo. What does that mean? It means this is no longer the fourth fret. This is the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, so forth and so on. So if you are trying to get familiar with the D chord, it is the first finger on the second fret of the G string, the second finger on the high E string, and on the second fret as well, and then the third finger at the third fret of the B string. All right? And it's the bottom four chords that we're going to be strumming. And all you need to know is this D chord. All right? We're not going to move our hand from this position, but I'm going to show you three other chords, or, sorry, two other chords related to this one. So the first one is I'm going to show you dsus2. And all you have to do is you have to lift up your second finger off the high E string, okay? So it's just playing open like that. So we have a D chord. And then if you lift up your second finger, it's going to sound like that. That's DSUS 2. So put that finger back down and then lift it up so you have D. Dsus 2, back to D. All right, so that's the second chord. The third chord is we're going to put our pitch pinky down on the high E string. Now, much brighter D chord. This is called dsus4. Okay, so we have dsus4. Lift up the pinky. D chord, lift up the second finger, Dsus2.
Okay, and there you go. We got free falling. Now, you're probably listening to that, going. Lauren, is that how we're going to strum it? No, I'm going to show you very simply how to strum this and make it sound good. And we're going to do a playthrough at the end as well. We're just going to start off with the timing. Okay. There are very, very specific accents in this song. So to start off, our rhythm is going to be played over two measures of music. Now, measures of music, think of them as like a dollar bill and there's four quarters. So we're going to count to four. 1, 2, 3, 4. That's called the measure of music. 1, 2, 3, four. That's the second measure of music. All right, so when I'm explaining these strumming patterns, you're going to see some numbers popping up over here. It's referring to the measure. The first measure is going to start on a D chord and we're going to strum down and then we're going to put our Pinky down for DSUS 4. Okay? Now the timing of that is in between the two and the three. So it's 1 and 2 and 3.
And 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.
And so the numbers in music are what we call the downbeat and the ands are what we call the upbeat. So if you imagine tapping your foot to music, you tap down on the downbeat. 1, 2, 3, 4. You tap up on the upbeat. All right, so this rhythm, this first measure is a D chord and then a DSUS4 chord. And we're going 1 and 2 and.
3 and 4 and down and down.
Okay?
All down strums 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And.
Okay, so that's the timing of our first measure. Ok? So if you got that D chord, you're just putting that pinky down and you got the first half of the strumming pattern, the second half. Our next measure is going to be starting on the DSUS 4. So you don't do anything. You leave your fingers in place and it's going to be one. And very, very quickly, we're going to lift that pinky up to go back to D1 and. And then we're going to lift up the bot, that second finger on the bottom string. And one and. And one. And.
That'S our count now for you. All you have to do is hum along with it. All right? If you can hum an accent, you don't need to know what the count is. A lot of students, great. It's good to know why we're doing what we're doing. But in music, eventually we just want to be able to feel the music. So I tell people, if you can sing it, you can play it. Okay, so if I just think about this rhythm and I sing.
So if you think about the song, you can hear that in. In the music. So we've.
The count just happens to be 1.
And 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4and.
Okay, so you can see I don't need to know what the count really is if I can hum along to it. So let's just try that a couple times. Let's just see if we can get in with the timing. I'll start by counting, and then I'm going to remove the count so that you can work on your timing. All right, so let's take it from the D chord. I'm just going to count to four, and then we'll start playing. So. Good. One, two, three, three, four.
One and two and three and four. And one and two and three and four. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3. Here we go.
And.
One more time.
Okay, so when I stopped counting, were you able to start humming and keep that rhythm, keep that timing. If yes, awesome. If no, don't worry. Pause the video, go back, play through it again. All right, if you have to slow me down, use the settings. Cog slow me down. Okay, so what we're going to do now is I'm going to take you through the first two verses. We'll play a little bit of intro, get our timing going, to do the first two verses and then the chorus, just so you can get a feel for what this sounds like over the actual lyrics. All right, ready? I'm going to count us in. I'm going to try and use about the tempo of the song. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.
And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and4. And 1 and 2 and 3, and 4 and 1 and 2. And here we go.
She's a good girl.
Loves her mama, Loves Jesus and America too. She's a good girl. Crazy about Elvis, Loves horses and a boyfriend, too.
Oh, well, it's a long day Living in receipt of. There's a freeway running through the yard. And I'm a bad boy. Cause I don't even miss her. I'm a bad boy for breaking her heart.
And I'm free.
You?
I'm free falling.
Oh, yeah, I'm free.
I'm free falling.
Now that entire song is based around the foundation of that rhythm. And eventually, as you progress and become a better guitar player and a better strummer, you can start, start filling that in. Okay, you can start making it sound better. But in the beginning, we got to keep things simple. Focus on the foundation, the timing and the rhythm. And as you become a better player, then you can make things sound a lot cooler. And if you're looking for another very, very simple three chord song to play, I would recommend checking out my simple man guitar lesson right over there. So if you. Super fun song, great for beginners and uses only three simple chords.
