Fortunate Son Acoustic Guitar Lesson with FUN INTRO!

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. We are going to be doing an amazing CCR song, Fortunate Son. We're going to be doing an acoustic guitar lesson to show you how to play that. Lots of requests for this song, and just because the songs played on electric doesn't mean you can't play it on acoustic and have a lot of fun. And we're going to go over the couple different lead lines in this, and we're also going to go over the chords and the strumming we can use on the acoustic guitar. So before we get into the fun little intro part for this song, let's just talk about the chords we're going to be using first. We have a G chord. We have a C chord. We have a D chord. We do have an F chord. Boo. But for this, I'm just going to play an F major 7 chord, which eliminates the bar chord. And when I show you the strumming we're going to use, it actually sounds really good. So if you're not great with bar chords, that's okay. If you want to use the bar chord, go ahead. But for this lesson, I'm going to be using the F major 7 chord. And it's really nice because we from an F chord into a C chord, and all you have to do is lift up the pinky and move that second finger up, and you can transition from the F right into the C. And if you're good at going between G and C, going between G And F major 7 isn't much of a stretch, so it makes the transition a little easier as well. So those are chords I'm going to be using on this lesson. Let's talk about that fun little intro first. So essentially, most of the intro is bass. Okay. It's a bass player, and he's playing a G note. Okay. Which would be the third fret on the top string. So if you want to do that, cool. Okay. But there is another part of this intro that is super fun. And even though it's played on an electric guitar, we can play it on the acoustic and still have it be fun and sound cool. So what we're going to do is we're going to take our second finger, and I'm going to put it on the second fret of the G string. Okay. I'm going to pick it, and I'm going to slide it to the fourth fret. Okay. So sliding. If you don't give it enough pressure, you're going to lose the note as you go up and slide into the next note. So it's. So you got to be pushing into the fretboard if that's hard. Instead of sliding, you could just pick the individual notes, too. But I like sliding because that's what they do on the record. So it's picking two, sliding into four. Okay, and then we're going to do. With our first finger, we're going to reach down and grab the third fret on the E string. So the first part of this intro is. Ooh, already sounding cool, huh? Okay, so we're doing. Or if you want to play the notes individually, you could play them individually, too. But you hear it sounds really cool when you slide it. So that's the first one. The next one is sliding one into two, and then first finger to the first fret. So. So the first one's 2 to 4. Third fret on the high E string, then 1 into 2. First fret on the high E string, both with the first finger reaching for that high E string. The next one, we're going to use our third finger on the third fret of the D string, and we're going three into five. And here I'm going to use my pinky to grab the fifth fret on the B string, and then we're going to repeat that again. We're going to go three into five. And then I'm going to use my first finger to grab the third fret on the B string. Okay, so the first one is three into five, pinky down, grabbing the fifth fret on the B string, repeat that same slide. Then first fret finger to the B string. Okay? So if I take all of these together and I play them one after the other, very slowly, it's going to be. And then we're going to end on first fret on the A string, third fret on the G string. All right, so this will take some practice, but the goal is to just go nice and slow in the beginning. And I tell people, sing it.

Ba da da ba da da, ba da da ba da da ba ba.

So even if you're not the greatest singer, you're going to hum it, too. So that's our intro, and that's just what's playing over this.

Okay.

And if that intro with the slides is too much, you can just sit there on the G. I'm just playing eighth notes. One and two and three and four, and one and two and three and.

Four, and ba da da, ba da da da da da da.

So that is the intro section to the song. Now let's jump into the strumming. So since I'm playing an acoustic, I like to play with the dynamics on this a bit. So for this song, what we're going to do is we're going to do an eighth note strumming pattern all downs. Because it's rock and roll, right? 1 and 2 and 3, M4, M1 and 2 and 3, M4 and. All right. So if I put it over the chord progression, which is G, F, C to G, it'll sound like. Okay, that sounds pretty cool, right? But if I wanted to spice it up to have a little more dynamics going into the chorus, I might palm mute it. So what am I doing there? We call that palm muting in music. And I'm using the palm of my strumming hand to make the notes sound a little bit dead but still sound musical. So when I strum a regular chord, you hear it, the notes ring. We call this resonance. The. The notes are resonating, they're ringing. When I do this, there's still little resonance, but it's. It's not as sharp as when I just strum a chord regularly. So what I'm doing is I'm just placing my palm in front of the bridge here. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to do down strums. Now you'll know you're in the right spot because it has a chunky spot. If you're. If it sounds kind of dead, you're not in the right spot. And what I tell people to do is kind of go just behind your sound hole, put your palm. Now we're talking about the fleshy part of the palm. Just put it on the strings. And I'm kind of only getting the top three or four strings. I'm really going for the bass notes. And I slide my palm back towards the bridge until it opens up. Did you hear it open up? Let's do that again. Okay. It's going to sound really chunky and beefy, and it's real. This is a really cool. Okay. I'm going to show you how to do more of that stuff a little bit later on the chorus. But you can get really cool dynamics out of an acoustic guitar. And where this is like a rock song, I just think it sounds. It sounds really cool. So if I were to play this verse with the palm muting, it would sound like this.

Some folks are born with a flag Ooh, they're red, white and blue. When the band plays Hail to the Chief, they point the finger back at you.

Okay. So it just sounds. It just gives a little cool contrast to this verse versus what we can do on the chorus next. So what we're going to do on this chorus is a little bit of what I previewed before. We are going to accent this rhythm now. So we're going to open up the rhythm and make it come alive more. Because the chorus sections or songs are where the energy comes in. It's where we want to open things up, get things to come bigger. And I'm usually, you know, playing by myself. As an acoustic guitar player, you want to have dynamics in your music. Okay. You don't want the music to always be the same level. So let me just show you what this is going to sound like. It's going to sound like this. Okay. Very, very cool. Very, very common rock rhythm. Okay. This is one of many rhythms that I teach in my expressive rhythm and strumming program. If you're interested in that, you can check out the link in the description below. We talk about this percussive style of playing guitar, but what am I doing here? I'm keeping that same eighth note strumming pattern. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. And what I'm doing is I'm accenting the 1, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. So I'm accenting 1, the end after two and the fourth beat of my strum. And how am I doing that to accent to let the guitar ring through? I have to. I'm over exaggerating here, but I have to lift my palm away from the bridge of the guitar. Okay. I have to take my palm off the strings to let them ring. So if I go a little bit in slow motion here on this close up guitar, it's going to sound like this. So you can see on the accent, you can see my. I'm pulling my wrist. I'm pulling my palm away from the guitar. Now if you're still trying to find the sweet spot on your guitar, this can be tricky. It could be sounding like this. That's okay too. As you develop where that sweet spot is for the palm muting on your guitar, you can really make this come alive and open it up. So once again, it's 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4and. Okay, now if I pick up the speed. 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, so if I play this chorus before I teach you the interlude, the next kind of lead line for this song, it'll sound like this.

Hitting me, hitting me. I'm the cinnamon sun hitting Me hitting me I'm the fortunate one okay, now.

On that D chord, to do the palm muting on the D chord, you have to move your palm down the strings. Okay? You can't leave the palm up here and do the D chord or it's gonna ring. You have to move the palm down the strings to mute that D chord just as a note there. I wanted to make sure you saw that. All right, so we got another verse, another chorus, and then we have this bridge interlude, which is another kind of lead line. It sounds, like, Super cool. And that runs through just a couple times. So we're using kind of like these little double stops, these double notes. So we're using two strings, and we're playing them at the same time. Now I'm using my first and second fingers, and we're sliding along the B string and the G string. Okay, so this is the shape I'm going to be using. First finger is going to be on the sixth fret. And then my second finger is going to be on the seventh fret. Okay. B string, G string. So that's shape one. Okay, I'm just gonna slide that now down. So I use my first finger as my lead. Okay. I'm gonna slide from 5 to 6. And now I'm gonna slide from 5 to 1 and 2, and then up to 3 and 4. I'm just sliding the shape around the guitar so you can use your first finger again, lead. So just follow this finger down the guitar. If you keep this finger in the right spot, it's going to follow it. Okay, so I have six, five, one, three. Okay, six, five, then one, then three. So now if you want to add the slide in, you're starting at sixth fret and seventh fret. Just a pick. Five and six. Just a pick. We're going to slide from four, five, now down to one and two with a pick on the end. So it's going to be. So we're sliding down. All right, and then we're going to pick one and two again by itself. Pick one and two again and slide up to three and four. Okay. Just sliding right into it, not picking three and four. So it's. Very hard to do if you're not good with slides yet, which is why I said you could just play the notes without the slides. Okay. You could just play the notes individually, but with the slides in it. Sounds really, really cool. So what we're gonna do now is we are going to. I'm just gonna play a little bit of the intro with the bass Note. Okay. You can either play the bass note with me or you can practice the lead line over it. I'm gonna do that for four measures just to give us a little intro and then I'm gonna hop into the verse. I will play the lead line in the middle. Okay. Because that one's a little easier. Doesn't require me to practice as much. I admit. For that intro to play at full speed, I'd probably have to practice it a few times through. So what we're going to do is we're going to take it from the intro. Just going to play four measures. One and two and three and four and one and two and three. I'll do it four times and then we'll jump into the actual singing. Ready? Here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, four.

Here we go. Ready?

Some folks are born with a flag Red, white and blue and when your fan plays Hail to the Chief they point the finger out at you Enemy, enemy I know, Santa, the sun hit in me hitting me I'm the Fortune 1. Some folks are born with silver spoon in their hand Lord, they can help.

Themselves.

When the taxman comes to the door Lord, the house look like a rum itself it ain't me, it ain't me I'm no sanity sun hitting me in me I'm no fugitive. Some folks inherit star spangled eyes Ooh, they send you down a wall when they ask them how much should we give? The only answer is ma ma ma yay. It ain't me, it ain.

And on the end, we kind of call that a trash can ending where you just go really, really fast and then you strum and meet the guitar. It's a great way to end a high energy song like this CCR song here. Now, if you really enjoyed this strumming pattern, then I highly recommend you check out my summer of 69 lesson right over there where I'm going to show you how you can apply this strumming pattern to that song. It also has a really cool interlude section that I think you'll find very fun and interesting. Go watch that lesson right over there right now.