Easy Guitar Songs for Beginners Over 50

So one of the biggest mistakes that beginner guitar players make is that they try to learn songs that are too difficult for them. And sometimes that can be tricky here on YouTube because something says it's for beginners, but you're not quite sure, is it your level of beginner? So what we're going to do in this video is I'm going to show you what to look for in a good beginner guitar song if you're just getting started with the guitar. And I'm also going to give you 10 simple song examples, uh, that you should be able to play along with, with a little bit of practice after this lesson. So let's get into the first section, which is— I'm just going to dive into what to look for in a good beginner song. So first things first, look for a song that has a small number of chords, meaning it only has 3 chords or 4 chords max. And a tip that I give to my students is I say learn 4 chords first and try to play as many songs with those chords as possible. So for example, in my 7-Level Guitar System, the first 4 chords, the first set of chords that I teach is, um, E minor, G, C, and D, because with those 4 chords you can play literally thousands of songs on the guitar. Um, another good set to learn would be A, D, E, and F-sharp minor. That's usually the second set of chords that I teach my students in my 7 Level Guitar System. And the reason for that is that these are what we call keys in music. They're just groups of chords that sound really good together. So if you can limit your songs to 3 or 4 chords, it's gonna be less brain processing, um, and make it easier for you to learn the song. Another thing that can be helpful, and I'm gonna show you in a few examples, um, that I picked out, is having a repetitive chord progression. Now, a chord progression is the order in which we play the chords. So for example, you could have a song where the chord progression is G, E minor, C, D, and you play those 4 chords over and over and over again for the entire song.

Mm-hmm.

And this is super helpful because if you're someone who's just learning chords and you're having a hard time, you're probably watching your hands and you don't wanna keep track of the music. It's easy to keep track of 4 chords that repeat over and over again. Because for a lot of beginner students, our chord changes are very slow. Um, so right now we're not focusing a lot on really, really intricate rhythms. Um, when we're trying to play along with the song, it could feel like we're almost trying to survive and play along with the song. Um, so the— again, the less your brain has to process, the better as a beginner student. And I already mentioned in the last point, we're not getting super intricate with our strumming yet, especially if you're an absolute beginner. You might be playing one strum per chord, okay?

Mm-hmm.

And that is totally fine right now because you're just working on learning the chords, getting your speed up to, you know, getting the chord changes up to speed, which is very, very hard for a lot of beginners. So don't focus too much on trying to be really cool and exciting with your strumming in the beginning. As you continue, you're consistent in your practice, your chord changes will be fast enough for you to make your strumming sound a lot more like the song. So this is where we're gonna head into the fun part of this lesson, which is I'm gonna teach you 10 songs, okay? 10 songs that are fairly easy. We're, again, we're gonna focus on keeping the strumming simple. We're not, we're working on getting our chords and our chord changes up to speed. So our strumming can't be super intricate. But before we jump into the songs, I do wanna show you some simple strumming patterns that you can use in these songs, and you can progress through them as your chord changes get faster. So I have 4 strumming patterns I'm going to show you here, and I might show you more as we progress, uh, through with some of the other songs. But I already showed you one of them, which is the easiest of all. If you're an absolute beginner, you're just getting started, your chord changes are not that quick, you're kind of building your chords one finger at a time, you'd want to use this which is what we call a whole note strumming pattern. It's just one strum per chord and we count to 4. So if I just used a simple chord change of going from E minor and pivoting into my easy C chord, which is just my— we have an E minor chord is your first and second fingers. Hopefully you know your chords. If you don't, don't worry, you'll have time to learn them. But very quickly, E minor's first and second fingers on the second fret of the A and D string. And I teach in my 7 Level System a very easy C chord which is your first finger moves to the B string at the first fret. Okay, so if you're someone who's like, your chord changes are very slow, okay, and you're going between E minor and C, which if you just learn these two chords, you can actually play the song Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles, just so you know. Um, but our strumming pattern is going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, and if you're trying to use the full C chord, you can still use the little pivot, all right, on the second finger. And again, you might be slower, so you need that time to change between the chords. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Again, at this point we're just working on mechanics and getting the fingers moving. Uh, the next one would be when you're, you know, your chords start moving a little bit quicker. Okay, you get a little bit more time to, to change between these chords. So we would just do 4 strums per chord. So it'd be 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. And then for people who have kind of more consistent chord changes and you're starting to work on timing and rhythm, we can add an up strum in the middle. So it can be 1, 2 and 3, 4, down, down, up, down, down.

1, 2 and 3, 4, down, down, up, down, down. Okay.

So it just adds a little extra spice. Starts making things sound a little bit more musical. And for those of you, again, who have even faster chord changes, we can put it up on the end. All right? So the problem with upstrums on the very end of strumming is your chord changes have to be pretty quick, uh, to make it sound consistent enough and good.

So in this example, it'd be 1, 2, and 3, 4, and down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, 1, 2, and 3, 4, and 1, 2, and 3, 4, and—

So those are just a few Uh, some simple strumming patterns that I teach a lot of students. And now what we're going to do is we're going to jump into the easiest song, or what I think is one of the easiest songs. It's the first song that I teach students in my 7-Level Guitar System. It's a great song by the band America. It's called Horse with No Name. It only uses 2 chords, and we're going to use that 4-strum pattern. Now I'm going to play through the choruses of 10 songs, and I'm going to tell you which strumming pattern I'm going to use.. But if you can only use that first strumming pattern of 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, that's perfectly fine. All right, so Horse With No Name is a great confidence builder. It's why I teach students it as their first song. It's only got 2 chords, and we can keep the strumming very simple, and the chord progression is the same. It basically goes E minor to this chord called— it's like a D6 add 9, okay? D6 9. Mm-hmm. Okay, it's 2 chords, so that's great. And you don't have to memorize a chord progression 'cause you're just alternating between the 2 chords for the entire song. Makes it a great beginner song. So I'm just gonna do it with 4 downstrums and it would sound like this. 1, 2, ready.

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name. Felt good to be out of the rain.

In the desert, you can't remember third chord does come into play, an E major chord. But for this chorus, we're just going to need to transition from an A chord to a D chord. Okay, and this is great practice because if you play your A chord with your first, second, and third fingers like I do, okay, you just move your first and second finger down, third finger comes in the middle. So it's not the easy— it's not a pivot like going from that E minor to C, but it is a slightly easier chord change. The rhythm I'm gonna use on this is the 1, 2 and 3, 4 and down, down, up, down, down. It's gonna sound like this.

Don't worry about a thing. 'Cause every little thing gonna be all right. Singing, don't worry about a thing. —about a thing, 'cause every little thing is gonna be all right.

So you can hear on that it's mostly A, okay? So that makes it easy for you to play along with, and it's a very nice and relaxed song. That's another tip for beginners: slower songs are easier to play than fast songs. This next song is by Bob Dylan. It's called Knockin' on Heaven's Door. It only uses 3 chords. It uses a G chord, an A minor chord, and a C chord. And a great thing about this is it's one of those repetitive chord progressions. We're going from a G and a D chord splitting a measure. So G is 2 beats, D is 2 beats, followed by an A minor. And then it's G 2 beats, D 2 beats, followed by C. And then it just repeats that over and over and over again for the entire song. And this is a great beginner song. It's a great fun, everyone recognizes this song, it's very singable, so great song for beginners. I'm gonna use the 1, 2 and 3, 4 and, and I'm actually gonna, on that last chord, just spice things up a little bit. I'm gonna play 4 downs followed by an up. It's gonna sound like this. So on the first chord, it's gonna be down, down, up, and then we have a D chord, down, down, up, and then 1, 2, 3, 4 and. And. And if you need notes for any of these songs, you can go to my website, laurenbateman.com. I have tutorials, YouTube videos for all of these songs, especially beginner versions. So go over to my website, you can check 'em all out if you wanna learn further. So let's take this from the top on the chorus. So it's gonna sound like this. We got 1, 2, 3, 4.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door. Knock knock knocking on heaven's door. Knock knock knocking on heaven's door. Knock knock knocking on heaven's door.

Again, nice slow tempo, very even-kiltered, a great song to bust out at a campfire. Now our next song is gonna be Bad Moon Rising by CCR. Great band. But before we get into the song, I just wanna quickly introduce myself. If you guys don't know who I am, my name is Lauren Bateman and I specialize in helping older adults, usually ages 50 plus, learn to have fun playing the guitar, playing great songs just like this one, uh, by CCR. So this one is really great. It's a simple progression. All right. It's got a very steady rhythm. And, uh, it's really good for chord change practice because we've got a G chord to a D chord. Okay, and then we've got A— or sorry, D to A and then A to G. Okay, so the 4 chords we have, as I just said, are G, A, and D. So a little bit of chord movement. And the great thing about this is you get to repeat chords. I like songs when you can play chords for 2 measures in a row. It means you really get to sit on the strumming pattern. It makes it more fun, I think, for for the student. So I'm gonna use the 1, 2, and 3, 4. 1, 2, and 3, 4. Ready? Here we go. 1, 2, and 3, 4. 1, 2, and 3, 4.

Don't go around tonight 'cause it's bound to take your life. There's a bad moon on the rise.

This next one is a favorite. When I do this at my live events, everyone is like singing in the room. It's a great song. It's Leaving on a Jet Plane by John Denver. Um, we're sticking in the key of G, so we're going to be using G, C, and D. Okay, like I said, if you learn a G chord, a C chord, a D chord, an E minor chord, there's a lot of songs that you can play with just those 4 chords. It So let's keep this one simple. Let's just do 4 down strums. All right, we're not going to be fancy with it. Let's just do 4 down strums on each chord. Here we go. So we got 1, 2, 3.

So kiss me and smile for me. Tell me that you'll wait for me. Hold me like you'll never let me go. Go. 'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again. Oh, babe, I'd hate to go.

[SPEAKING CHINESE] This next one is a great early '90s tune by Joan Osborne. It's called "What If God Was One of Us." It has a great repeatable chord progression, which I love. All of the chords on this are 2 beats each. So for this, I would recommend doing either 2 down strums per chord, or I'm gonna do down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down. Down. So the chord progression for this is E minor, C, G, D. Another song with those 4 chords. Ready? 1, 2, 3.

What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us. Just a stranger on the bus.

This next one is a great classic beginner guitar song. It is Marshall Tucker Band's "Can't You See," okay? We're using D chord, C chord, G chord, okay? If I'm not proving my point about G, C, D, and E minor, hopefully you're getting the picture here. A lot of these songs are using those chords, and I did that intentionally. So we have again very repeatable pattern: D, C, G, D. Okay, it's got a great strong groove. We're going to use that down, down, up again, so we're going to do that twice per chord.

Says, Can't you see, can't you see what that woman, she been doing to me? Can't you see? Can't you see what that woman, she been doing to me?

All right, for this song, I'm going to show you a little bit more of an aggressive strumming pattern, but I think it works great for this song. It's Zombie by the Cranberries. Great song. I love performing this song. It is so much fun. Chord progression: E minor, C, G, D. I think that's the same chord progression as Joan Osborne's song, okay? Except for this one, we're gonna play each chord for 4 full counts. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. The special strum that I'm going to show you is going to be an eighth note strumming pattern all down. So we're going to count 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, and we're going to do all downs. We're which is very, very hard for beginners. We'll keep it at a slower tempo. If you can't do all the downs, just do the 4, okay? You can do that. But it's gonna sound something like this. 1 and 2 and 3.

In your head, in your head. Zombe, zombe, zombe. Eh, eh, otsi, ohe. In your head. Zombe, zombe, zombe. Eh, eh, eh, oh.

You can tell I really like that one. That's a good one for my voice too. I think she was an alto and I am also an alto. This next song is super fun. I love playing this live with students. Simple Man, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Okay, we're gonna keep this one simple. We're just gonna do 4 down strums, and it's great because it only uses 3 chords over and over again. All right, so the chord progression for this one is going to be C, G, and then A minor twice. Okay, so it's C, G, A minor twice. Again, nice and slow rhythm. Let's start off by just playing the chord progression, 4 strums, and then we'll get into the singing. So we got 1, 2, 3, 4.

1. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. Ready?

Here we go.

And be a simple catamayan. Or be something You love and understand. And be a simple cataman. Oh, won't you do this for me, son?

If you So this last song I'm gonna show you uses also the chords C, G, E minor, and D, but it's a nice slow-paced song, and you can get fancy with the strumming if you want to, but I'm just gonna show you how keeping the strumming simple and just using one strum per chord can still sound great on a ballad like this. So let's take it from the top.

We're just gonna be like— Mm-hmm.

One strum per chord and letting it ring. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4. It's late in the evening.

She's wondering what clothes to wear. She puts on her makeup and brushes her long blonde hair. And then she asked me, uh, do I look all right? And I said, yes, you look wonderful tonight.

Now I hope that proves to you that, you know, the best beginner guitar songs are not necessarily the flashiest songs. They're the ones that are fun, that keep you interested, and wanting to learn and wanting to play. And like I said earlier, I think a lot of students, you get ahead of yourselves because we want it to sound exactly like the song. We wanna do cool strumming. But in the beginning, we're working on a lot of mechanics. So keeping things slow and keeping things simple. And if you learn these 10 songs, you are gonna have a really cool setlist to play for family and friends, even if you just keep it that simple one strum per chord. Yeah. Chord. I've taught thousands of students to go through this program and learn how to play the songs they know and love, like some of the songs that we played today. And what you're gonna learn in this program is everything you need, all the skills, all the techniques to play fun songs like this and take them to the next level. And we go through everything step by step, one level at a time, so you're never gonna get ahead of yourself. That's the tricky thing with YouTube. I love YouTube. I'm over here. I teach people all over the world for free. But like you said, you're going to click on something that says it's for a beginner, and then you're going to go try and play that song or play that exercise, and maybe it's over your head, and that's not going to make you feel good because you're like, man, this says it's for beginners, I'm not able to do this, maybe I'm not cut out to play the guitar. And that is absolutely wrong. I believe anyone can play the guitar if they are committed to it and put in the time and effort and energy and they have a good system behind it. So if you want to get a good system behind your practice, behind your playing, I highly recommend you go to the link in the description below, check out my 7 Level Guitar System. I would love to help you along your guitar journey and have a lot more fun playing songs on your guitar. Thank you.