In this beginner‑friendly tutorial Lauren Bateman teaches an acoustic arrangement of Bush’s “Glycerine”. She introduces the four power‑chord shapes (F5, C5, D5, B♭5), explains the theory behind power chords (root + fifth), and shows two fingerings: a two‑string version and a fuller three‑string version using a pinky or a flattened third finger as a mini‑barre. She stresses wrist health, advising players to stop if they feel pain and to stretch regularly. The lesson then builds a three‑level strumming pattern: level 1 – straight down eighth‑note strums; level 2 – the same rhythm with accented beats (1, the “and” after 2, and 4); level 3 – adds palm‑muting, with detailed guidance on palm placement, finding the sweet spot, and releasing the mute on accented beats. Lauren outlines the song’s chord progression (verses/intro: F‑C‑D‑B♭; chorus: F (full measure) → C (2 beats) → B♭ (2 beats) – played without mute; bridge: variation between D and B♭). She offers practice tips for endurance, hand fatigue, and encourages learners to pause, shake out their hands, and keep the rhythm steady. The tutorial concludes with a full play‑through of the song and a recommendation to watch a dedicated palm‑muting video for deeper mastery.
Chapters
Hey guitar enthusiasts, I have an absolutely amazing guitar song here by the band Bush. It's called Glycerine. We're gonna do it on an acoustic guitar. I'm gonna show you how to make it fun, make it cool. We're gonna keep it as simple as possible. All right, I'll show you some spices and we're gonna play through the whole thing by the end of this lesson. So let's talk about the chords we're going to be using for this song. There's going to be 4 of them that are kind of going to repeat over and over again. And there's only one part of the song where it changes just a little bit, and we'll get to that part when we get there. So we're gonna be using a power chord shape, okay? So there's two ways you can play a power chord, okay? You can either play it with two strings, or you can get a fuller sound and you can play it with three strings, okay? So I'm going to show you that shape starting with the F power chord. Now on a chord chart, you're going to know it's a power chord because it's going to say F5. It's going to have the number 5 after it, and that's because Just a little music theory for you. A power chord is made up of two notes: the root note, the note that gives the name to the chord. So in this case, it would be an F note, and then its fifth. Okay, and the fifth is referring to another note in a scale, but just know it's the root and the fifth. Okay, and that's why it is an F5 chord or power chord. So you'll see I put my first finger on the F note. Okay, on the first fret of the low E string, okay? And now I'm going to stretch my third finger to the third fret on the string below, which is the A string. So I'm gonna have— for some of you, this might be tough because we're working in the first 3 frets, so it's gonna be a little bit of a stretch. If you need to use your pinky for now, you can, but it's gonna limit you on playing to just the 2-string versions, okay? So that is your F chord, okay? And I'm gonna go to the next chord. I'll come back and show you the fuller version. So we have F is our first chord. Our next chord is going to be a C chord. Which is going to be 3 and 5. Okay, so it's the same shape. I've taken this shape, we go from the F chord and I slide everything up 2 frets, I'm on 3 and 5, and then I move everything down 1 string, I have my C5 chord. If I move that up 2 frets, same shape, that's the great thing about power chords, it's just a slidable shape. I have a D chord, and then if I move everything up back to the low E string and up another fret. So now I'm on 6 and 8. We have a B-flat power chord. Okay, so our chords are F, C, D, and then B-flat. You're probably already hearing the song. Okay, so that's one option. The other option, there's a fuller version, which is you play the chord I just showed you and you put your pinky below on the 3rd fret now. So I've got 1st fret, top string, my E string, 3rd finger on the 3rd fret of my A string, and then my pinky right below it on the 3rd fret of the D string. Another option is you could just bar it by, by flattening your 3rd finger. Okay, some people find that more comfortable. I like doing it this way, one, because it's, it's more comfortable for my hand, but two, It also mimics the bar chord shape, so it helps you get more comfortable for that. So that's what I like to— either way, I've done it both ways, um, but I do find this way just more comfortable for me with my hand size and my wrist. Okay, and wrist health is very important. Speaking of wrist health, before we get into how we're going to play these chords, um, power chords do require some strength. If you're ever feeling pain or tension in your wrist, stop playing, shake out your hands, especially if this is your first time playing a song that uses all power chords. Same if eventually you use a song that has bar chords, just stretch your hand. Do not play through pain. Do not play through pain. Okay, so our chord progression, the order that we're going to play these chords, is going to be F, C, D, B-flat, just the exact order that I showed them in. So the strumming pattern we're going to use, and we're going to start simplest and I'm going to make it more complicated, but keep it to your level, keep it to where you're at. The simplest way to play this song is all straight eighth notes downs, okay?
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2.
So if I put that over the chord progression, it'd sound like this. Ready?
And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and M.
Okay, that's the simplest way to do it and the easiest way to do it. And you're gonna say, Lauren, that sounds nothing like what you just did, and there's a reason for it. So to play it the way I'm going to show you here, um, which is a little bit kind of next level, um, is we're going to add a little bit of what we call palm muting into the song. Okay, this is a technique I teach in my Expressive Rhythm and Strumming Course. Okay, but it's a really, really cool technique that you can work on here starting in this lesson if you want to. So what we're doing is we're taking that same exact strum— I'm not changing the rhythm, I'm keeping the same pattern, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and And what I'm doing, I'm at first I'm adding an accent, okay? I am accenting the strum 1, I'm accenting the and after 2, and I'm accenting the 4.
So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. So that's my accent, 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.
Very, very common accent pattern that you'll hear a lot, um, in, in rock music. So that's the accent I'm using, and you can try and add that without the palm muting by just playing louder on those accents.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.
It already— it has a little bit more life to it than just playing. Okay, there's nothing wrong with that, but you can hear just by accenting, by strumming a little bit harder on 1, the end of 2, and the 4, can add just a little bit of extra life. But what's the palm muting technique, which will really bring it to full life for— so, so level 1 is just straight down strums, okay? Level 2 is adding the accents, and level 3 is adding the palm muting, okay? That's gonna be level 3 of this strumming pattern. What am I doing? So as the name suggests, we're going to be muting with the palm of our strumming hand. Okay, and it's going to be this kind of fleshy fat part of the palm. Every guitar is different to find the sweet spot. Okay, so I'm on the close-up video here, so you're gonna see I'm going to put my palm right in front of this bridge, but we're gonna find the sweet spot. Typically, that's where the sweet spot— somewhere in here. What I tell students to do is start a little bit further, kind of like just in front of the sound hole here, Put your fleshy part of your palm on kind of like your top 2 strings, okay, because we're gonna just be working off the top 2 or 3 strings, and I want you to just strum those strings. Okay, you're gonna hear it's a very muted sound. What we are trying to go for is this. Hear that? That has a lot more meat, a lot more beef to it. Okay, so this is not what we want. You can hear now that's dead. It's sounds dead compared to— okay, so what I want you to do is I want you to slide the fleshy part of your palm back along these top 2 or 3 strings until your guitar opens up like that. So let me just show you here at my guitar. There you go, hear it open up. It's, it's going to resonate. You'll— you like here, I'm not It's opening up. I'm not quite far enough here. It's like you can hear like the— there's a resonance that's coming from these strings still. So that's what you want. Now when you first do this, it's probably going to sound like this, and it's going to take practice, and that's okay. That's why you're going to practice. But that is the technique. It's called palm muting. And if I now add my chords and put that accent into it 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. So what am I doing on the accents? I am releasing the palm muting. If you watch my hand, you're going to see my hand kind of— I'm overexaggerating, the hand's not going to go that far away, but I'm removing my hand from the strings to let them ring. So kind of be going, okay? Now if I add a chord Okay, if I slow that down for you to see, I'm gonna go with my D chord.
Okay, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
So now if I put it over the chord progression, watch that hand.
Watch again.
So you can see that my hand is swinging out of the way for that accent. So that is the foundation of the rhythm and the strumming for pretty much this entire song. There are little embellishments that you can add in and little things, but that's primarily what we're going to be using for this song. And like I said, most of it is that chord progression. There are some spots where there's changes. So before we do a playthrough, I want to make note of that. So our verses, our intro, same chord progression. It's gonna be F to C to D to B-flat. Okay, so the chorus section is where our first change comes. We have F for a full measure, and then we have a C for 2 beats and a B-flat for 2 beats. And I'm going to recommend that you play those not muted. So it's going to sound like this. We have F, which we will do the palm muting for. Okay, just gives a little bit more depth to that chorus section. So all I'm doing is 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, and then back to F. All right, so we're skipping over the D chord for our chorus section, and the only other change is the bridge section, which we would expect, because most, um, bridge sections do have change. Uh, it starts the same, F, C, D, B-flat, but then we change between D and B-flat for the Bad Moon White Again.
So we got bad moon white again, bad moon white again, and she falls around me.
Okay, and I'd probably again just play it the way I did there without the commuting, just keeping those eighth note strums, because it just adds a little bit of depth and complexity to the song, especially if you're playing by yourself. All right, so now we're gonna do a complete playthrough all the way through. So this will work on your endurance. So if you get through the first verse and chorus and your hand gets tired, shake it out. Okay, give me another verse and then jump in on the second chorus again with with me, okay? There is a strength component to playing all power chords or all bar chords for a song. So if this is something new for you, you might get tired. Totally normal. All right, just jump back in when your hand gets enough of a break. All right, we're going to take it from the top. Ready? Here we go.
It must be your skin I'm sinking in. It must be for real, 'cause now I can feel. I didn't mind. It's not my kind. It's not my time to wonder why. Everything gone white. Everything gray. Now you're here. Now you're away. I don't want this. Remember that. I'll never forget where you're at. Don't let the days go by. Glycerine. Glycerine. I'm never alone, I'm alone all the time. Are you at one or do you lie? We live in a wheel where everyone steals. When we rise, it's like strawberry fields. If I treated you bad, you bruise my face. I love you more, you got a beautiful taste. Don't let the days go by. Could have been easier on you. I couldn't change if I wanted to. Should have been easier, the three. The road friend, Fear, and you and me. Glycerine.
So there you go, that is Glycerine by Bush. And if you want another video that goes over that palm muting technique a little bit more in detail, you really, really want to master that sound, go check out this video over here which is called Mastering palm muting on the guitar. I'll show you again step by step how to get that really cool sound on your guitar.
