Lauren Bateman teaches Stand By Me using four open chords, with a workaround for the F# minor barre chord by shifting an A major shape down one string. She covers pivot and slide fingerings for smooth transitions and a simple five-stroke strumming pattern, with play-along sections for each part.
Hey, guitar enthusiasts, we're doing Stand By Me on Guitar here by Benny King. Now, this song does have a barre chord, but I have a very nice fix for those of you who are beginners. That's why this is a beginner lesson. We're gonna be playing four open chords instead of a bar chord. So let me show you how we're gonna fix that.
So the chords you would typically use for this song are gonna be an A major chord, a D major chord, an E major chord, and then, oh, this F sharp minor bar chord in. And you can even hear. That was kind of. That was kind of a crappy barre chord on my part, too. But I'm going to show you an easy fix for this, because for a lot of people, they play this bar chord, and that's what it sounds like. And it's so frustrating when you're a beginner and you come across these bar chords and you can't play them. So what I do for my students is I show them easy fixes so that when we're at the beginner level, we can still play these songs and have fun with them. So because we're already using an A major chord in this song, all I want you to do is take that A major chord and move everything down one string. So you're going to be playing everything on the bottom three strings. Okay. Now, there's many ways to play this A major chord for some of you. I know some of you have really big fingers. You can't fit three fingers in that. So you might be playing it as a bar already, or you might just be playing it with two fingers. However you play your A chord, just shift that down three strings, and you're just going to strum the bottom three strings. You're going to. It doesn't sound as full or as nice as the full bar chord, but if you can't, it's better than. It's definitely a lot better than that. So that's my easy fix for that F sharp minor barre chord. Now, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Lauren Bateman, and I help make the guitar make sense. I especially love working with older beginners so that you can have fun playing the songs you know and love just like this one. So the strumming pattern. Let's talk about it. All right, the strumming pattern. We're going to be doing a very, very simple beginner strumming pattern. Now, for a lot of people, if you're just getting started, you might just want to do four strums per chord and just be going, 1, 2, 3, 4.
Just four strums per chord. And that's the nice thing about this song. It's not a fast song either. So we really can take our time with the strumming. And. And so you guys know I do have notes over on my website, laurenbateman.com you can follow along with the chords and the lyrics over there if you need some extra notes. So the chord progression for this song is very repetitive. It's eight chords and then we go back and repeat the same thing over and over again. Another reason why it's a great beginner song. So we're gonna play two measures of A, two measures of F sharp minor. All right. Remember, we're just gonna be moving our A chord down one string each. It makes it a very nice simple chord transition. Then after F sharp minor, we're already here, we're going to shoot to D. Alright. So if you notice, this is something I teach my students in my seven level guitar system. We always focus on pivot points. What fingers can we leave down? The less fingers we move, the easier it is to get into the next chord. So we're going from F sharp minor into a D chord. Look at this. I just leave. If you play with your first finger on that top string, I can leave that finger there and just pivot the other two into place. All right, so we've got an A chord. We shift everything down one string to the F sharp minor. We pivot into the D chord and then watch this. This is a cool trick. We're going to get into that E major chord, slide your first finger up and put the other two fingers in place. Isn't that cool? So we just got all these cool little pivot points and slide points. The only thing with the A chord is you have to move a few extra fingers. But it's not too bad. These two just come down two strings and the A chord goes on top. So once again we got A chord, F sharp minor chord, D chord, and then the E major chord. Okay, we're going to play each one of these twice in a row. So you get to hang on each of the chords a little bit. Now, if you feel like you're up for an extra little challenge, what I would recommend is adding in a nice little upstrom in between the three and the four beat. So it's going to sound like this.
So you can hear that 1, 2, 3 and 4. Down, down, down, up, down. That's the strumming Pattern. Let's just try that a couple times. Let's play it. We're staying on that A chord. Let's just play it four times in a row so you guys can practice playing along with me. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4.
Down, down, down, up, down.
Now what we're going to do is we're going to apply this strumming pattern over that chord progression. I have a slight correction to make because I looked at my notes. So the chord progression for this song is going to be two A chords, two F sharp minor chords, a D chord once, an E chord once, and then back to the A chord for two measures. So you get to stay on that A chord a lot in this song. Now, if you're a member of my fellowship of the strings, I will give you access to a full play along of this song. So if you're a member of my private community, hop on over there and you can find the secret link over there for that video. So let's start off with an intro, then I'll jump into a verse and then I'll jump into a chorus. Ready? Let's get that strumming down. So we got 1, 2, 2, 3 and 4. 1, 2, 3 and 4.
One, two, three and four. Down, down, down, up, down.
Okay, on your own.
D.
E.
Ready? Here we go.
When the night.
Has come.
And the land.
And the moon is the only.
Light we'll see.
No, I won't be afraid no, I won't be afraid Just as long.
As you stand.
Stand by me.
So dar darling stand by me oh, stand.
By me.
Oh, stand.
Stand.
By me Stand by me.
If you're looking for more songs for beginners that use these exact same chords, then go check out my beginner song playlist right over there. There's great songs like Leaving on a Jet Plane, Walk the Line, and other classics that you could start learning today. Go click on that playlist right now.
