Lauren Bateman teaches a beginner-friendly guitar lesson for Elvis's 'Hound Dog', arranging it as a simplified 12-bar blues in the key of C. The lesson specifies the three chords used (C, F as an Fmaj7 simplification, and G), explains finger movements between C and Fmaj7, and details the 12-bar progression (C for 4 measures, F for 2, C for 2, G for 1, F for 1, C for 2). Basic strumming is four down strums per chord with an optional 'down, down, down, up' embellishment; the video includes counted play-throughs and a sung verse demonstration.
Chapters
What I'm going to do today is go over another simple song with you. This song is Elvis's Hound Dog. Now the great thing about this song is it is quite repetitive. It uses what we call a 12 bar blues pattern, but it's not played in your traditional blues style. So this song I'm playing in the key of C, which means our chords that we're going to need for this song are C major, an F chord and a G chord. Alright, now you heard me say F and F is a bar chord. But we can simplify this and make it easy so that you can actually play the song without having to know how to play tricky and difficult bar chords. So I'm going to suggest is that you play an F major 7 chord. Oh boy. Alright, so what's that? So it's a C major chord and all you have to do is these top two fingers. You need to move your second finger down one string and your third finger down one string. So they're kind of like on an angle on the fourth, third and second strings. So we got this F major seven. So to get back to C, we just move the second finger up one string and the third finger up one string. So you just have to move these two fingers between C and F major 7. So the chord progression for this sign that keeps repeating is we have the C chord for four measures. That means we have to count to four four times. Then we have an F chord for two measures, Then we go back to a C chord for two measures. Then we have a G chord for one measure, an F chord for one measure, and then we have C chords for two more measures. So if you add that all up, it should add up to 12 measures of music. Once we do that, we just repeat the whole thing over and over again. For all the different verses of this song, there's really just two verses to this song. It kind of goes back and forth between verse one and verse two. There is an instrumental verse as well. So what we're going to do is we're just going to go over how to play this. So we're going to start with our simple strum. Four down strums per chord. And the C we're going to do for four measures. So we have to keep track. We got to count to four four times. So let's start with that. Starting with our C major chord and.
It'S going to be one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. 1, 2, 3, 4. One, 2, 3, 4.
Then we're going to switch to four the that F major seven chord.
And we're going to play that for two measures. So we have to come to four twice.
One, two, three, Four. One, two, 3, 4.
And then we're going back to C for two more measures.
One, two, three, 4. 1, 2, 3, four.
Then we're going to a G chord.
1, 2, 3,4.
Then to an F chord for one measure.
One. One, two, three, FOUR.
And then we're going BACK to C for two measures.
1, 2, 3, FOUR. 1, 2, 3, Four.
So altogether we have played 12 measures of music. And once we get through those last two measures of C, we go back to the beginning again and we're going to play four measures of C all over again. So let's take it from the top. We're going to play through that whole 12 bar pattern. And we're gonna start with 1, 2, 3, 4.
C2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. C2, 3, 4. C2. Back to F now and F2, 3, 4. F2, 3, 4. To C. 1, 2, 3,4. 1, 2. Now we got G. 1, 2, 3. To F. 1, 2. Back to C. 1, 2, 3,. 4. 1, 2. Keep going. Stay on C. 1, 2, 3. 4. 1, 2, 3. Four. 1, 2, 3, four. Last one. 1, 2, 3, Four. Go to F. 1, 2, 3, FOUR. 1, 2, 3, FROUR. To C. 1,2, 3, FOUR. One, two, go to G and G. Two, three. And one, two, three. And C two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
And there you go. That's Hound dog. The entire song. You just do that. So let's give it a try. So I'm going to do a verse here. Just one verse. The whole thing.
You ain't nothing but a hound dog crying all the time.
You ain't nothing but a hound dog crying all the time.
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit.
And then it would all start again. Now you'll probably notice when I started singing and playing that the speed or the tempo of the song picked up quite a bit. That is the downside of this song is that it's a little bit peppy, but other than that, it's a pretty cool song. You can get a little intricate with the strumming, but we're not going to get into that. This video, because this is about playing simple songs from beginning to end with simple strumming patterns. If you want to spice it up a little bit. If you're finding that, hey, I can play this fast. This is easy. You can do that. Let's see, you could do.
When I played it, I kind of swung it a little bit. Don't worry about that. We'll keep it very straight on the beat.
So it's 1, 2, 3 and 4. And 1, 2. Crying all the time.
Crying all the time.
One, two, three, and four. One, two, three, and hold him.
One, two, three, &.
Building. One, two, three,& pull.
Him. So that's one way to kind of spice up the strumming for the song. But keep it simple. The whole song is just 12 measures of music that repeats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 times in a row, pretty much. So you can play that simple progression. You can play this entire song from beginning to end. So practice hard, and hopefully you can pick it up quickly.
