HOW TO - Fortunate Son Guitar Lesson - Strumming, Chords, & Licks

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome back. We're gonna do a super fun song. We're gonna do CCR's Fortunate Son. We're gonna be doing some picking. We're gonna be doing some strumming. This is gonna rock. Let's get into the lesson.

Now. Before I get into the intricacies of this song, I would consider this like a late beginner or even intermediate level song. Especially if you're gonna throw in some of these lead guitar picking parts that come in. It's definitely not a lesson for absolute beginners, but if you were a beginner, you could probably get away with just strumming along to the verses in the choruses. So I'll give you some options. But just as a heads up, this is probably a little bit more towards late beginner to early intermediate. So let's get started with the intro section of this song. So the easy way to play this if you're a beginner is just to sit on a G.

All you have to do is sit on a G chord. Very, very simple. But if you want to spice it up and you want to take it to the next level, we're going to be working on the actual picking for this. So there's this cool little lead guitar section. And this is much easier on an electric to play than an acoustic. But I've got my acoustic and my electrics are on the wall. So we're just going to play on the acoustic. So we're going to be starting on the G string at the second fret, and I'm going to use my second finger. And there's a reason. So we're going to be the second fret. Okay. And we're going to slide up to the fourth fret.

All right. So it's one pick, two notes. So you're going to slide really fast, two to four.

This is why I'm using my second finger. Because we're going to pick the third fret of the first string immediately after that. So it's going to be ba ba da ba. Hear that?

Okay, so that is the first part. Next part is we're going to go from the first fret, sliding into the second fret, and then we're going to pick the first fret on the bottom string. So it's so. So far we've got two sliding into four, picking the first string, third fret, one sliding into two, picking that first string, first fret. So we've got.

Okay, so that's the first part of this song. The next part is we're Going to start on the third. Third fret of the fourth string. I believe it's the fourth string. Yes. Three sliding to five. And I'm going to use my third finger to get the fifth fret on the B string. So it's.

And then we're going to do that same slide again, three to five.

I'm going to use my first finger on the third fret of the second string. Okay, so we've got the first slide, three to five.

And then fifth fret on the B string, three to five again. And then the third fret on the B string. So that part is really quick. If I get the right string.

And then we've got first fret on the A string, third fret on the G string. Now, that might be a bit much. I don't know if the actual guitar player plays that other bass player. It's probably the guitar player. But if we throw this all together, it's going to sound like this. It's going to be. And I'll play it a little bit slow.

Hear it? So again.

All right, so that is how our intro is. So again, it's going to be really quick. The slide, 2 to 4, 1 to 2, 3 to 5.

All right, so that is our intro. If you want to try playing that instead of just strumming a g chord for 10 measures, you can do that. So once again, just one more time before we hop off this. Two sliding into four.

One sliding into two. Three sliding into five. Again, Three sliding into five. And then bom, bom.

So there you go. There's your intro. Let me just go on for a little bit of a close up, just so you guys can see exactly what my fingers are doing. All right, here's the close up. And if you have your guitar strings are not clean, be prepared to end up with my finger here. You can see the black on it. Dirty fingers. So we're gonna be sliding two into four. Okay. And then first fingers reaching down, third fret on the bottom string. Then one sliding into two. First finger reaching down, first fret, bottom string. Then fourth string, third to fifth. Using the third finger to get the fifth fret on the B string. And then same slide, three to five. First finger on the B string, third fret. And then we've got first fret on a, third fret on G. So one more time we've got.

So real, guys. I just want to talk about the timing of that part. So it basically each lick is played at the one beat of the new chord. So it's All G, but it's played on the one beat. So we got 1 and 2, 3, 4. 1 and 2, 3, 4. 1 and 2, 3, 4, 1 and 2, 3 and. Alright, you hear that? So this part comes in really quick. So it's 1 and 2, 3, 4. 1 and 2, 3, 4, 1, 1 and 2, 3, 4. 1 and 2, 3 and. Or 3 and. So we're actually going to get to start using some chords here. All right. Outside of just a G chord. So the chord progression for this verse is going to be G, F, C, G. And then it repeats that again. G, F, C, G. That's our chord progression. Very, very simple. All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to use power chords. You can use the full open chords. If you know open chords, it'll work out just as well too. But it's ccr, It's a rock song. Let's use power chords. Okay, so we're going to start off with the G chord here. And you can just. If you know full bar chords, you can play full bar chords too. But the rhythm we're going to be playing is a little bit of a syncopated rhythm. So for the most part, what I hear in the rhythm, there's two different types of rhythms and they kind of mix between the two. But in the verses I hear more of one, in the chorus I hear more of the others. So let's do the first drumming pattern. So. So it's going to be one. All right? One, two and three and four. And so it's all down strum. So it's. So it's going to be 1, 2 and 3 and 4 and you got it. So 1, 2 and 3 and 4and. All right, so there's no down strum on two and there's no down strum on three. So it's a very syncopated rhythm. So we've got 1, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Okay. And I'm also releasing the pressure on my strings to make the rhythm hop a little bit. Hear that? So see how the ringing stops? So when I did that first strum, I just released. So if you let go of the pressure on the strings, it'll.

So I'm kind of cutting off the rhythm just a little bit on that first strum short. So we got 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And so I'm kind of releasing the pressure when I get to that second beat. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And so you see, I release the pressure. 1 and release 2 and release and 4. And so it's going to sound like this 1 and 2 and 3.

Hear that? It's kind of like this percussive rhythm. Super, super cool. A little bit more in the intermediate realm. If you are a beginner, just do straight up eighth notes. It won't matter. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Or use your open chords and do eighth note strumming. That's fine too. So if we play through this verse, it's going to be.

C, power chord.

Very, very, very cool sounding. So we do that twice through our verse. We're just going G, F, C, G. And then we're going to jump into our chorus. So let's see what rhythm we're going to use here. Chorus, we eliminate the F chord, which might be a yay for some of you beginner players. We're just going G, D, C, G. Okay. G, D, C, G. And then we're repeating that again. G, D, C, G. The strumming pattern we're going to use is very, very, very similar to what we just did. We're just adding one strumming pattern. We're just adding one strum, not pattern into the mix. So it's going to be one and, and, and four. And so we're just adding one extra down. So it's going to be.

Can you hear that?

Hear that.

Good. And then we go to C.

Okay, so you can hear that 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and, and, and 4 and 1 and, and the, and 4 and 1 and, &, and 4 and. So if I play through this chorus, it's going to be G, D, C.

Super, super cool sounding. Like I said, it's not very different than what we did in the verse. And if you listen carefully towards the end of that first verse, you'll hear that strumming pattern starting to come in. But I figured it'd be easier just to separate them. But you can, you can interchange between either of them. Do what you want. Because we have another really, really cool part coming in for, for our bridge. So let's talk about that. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this lesson so far. We're doing some really cool strumming here. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel so that you can see when I have more lessons just like this come out. So let's get into that bridge. So we have another verse that goes by another chorus, and then we have a bridge. And our bridge is basically an A chord. It's an A augmented chord, a D chord, an A chord. And then you repeat that again. A, A augmented D, and A. Don't worry about the augmented chord because we're going be playing a little lick over this section. Okay, so let's talk about what we're going to be playing. So we're going to be starting. We're mostly going to be playing on the B string and the G string. And we're going to be using two notes. So we're playing both of those strings at the same time. We're going to start at the sixth fret with our first finger on the B string and the seventh fret with our second finger on the G string. You're going to play them together. Very cool, like, dissonance sound.

And then we're going to slide that back to five and six. So five with the first finger, six with the second finger. So that's our next one. So the first one is.

And now what we're going to do is we're going to play five and six together, but we're going to slide it all the way down to one and two. Hear that?

So we got.

All right, and then we're going to play one and two again and then one more time and slide up to three and four. So we're just maintaining this shape. I'm not moving my fingers. I'm just sliding them along the strings. Okay, so we're going to start at.

6 and 7. So whichever finger you want to track with, either pick your first finger and track along that. So you would be playing 6, 5, 5, 1113. Or track with your second finger, whichever you prefer. I think I like to track with my lead finger, the one that's in front. So that one would track 7, 6, 6, 2, 2, 2, 4. All right, so we're going to put them together. So we're going to play 6 and 7. 5 and 6. 5 and 6, sliding down to the first and second frets. And then play it again. Play it one more time. And then slide up to 3 and 4. And then we just repeat that again so it's.

Hear it.

One more time. Six and seven.

Super, super cool. Love that it only plays it twice in the actual song, but feel free to play it as many times as you need to to get it under your thumbs. Fingers, not thumbs. Either way. Hey, guys, if you really are enjoying this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up. I really appreciate that. Let's wrap up the song. Okay, so let me try playing through a little bit of this. I'll try doing a verse in a chorus, and hopefully I don't get hit with copyright, but if I do, I'm gonna have to cut this section of the video out. But hopefully they let it stand. So let's see what we got. We're starting at a G chord, and our strumming pattern was 1 and 4. So we got 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4. Some folks. Ah.

Sometimes I gotta get the rhythms under my fingers. There we go.

Some folks are gone. And wave the flag. Oh, the red, white and bl.

And when they play hands with chief, they point the finger right at you.

So just to give you a little bit of an example of. Of what it sounds like. And I probably didn't switch between the strumming patterns, but sometimes when you're singing and playing, I just do whatever my brain goes towards. So the muscle memory. But there you go. Super, super cool song. We got lots of cool strumming, a little. Couple little cool picking parts. So work your way through on this. Have lots of fun with it. YouTube's gonna pop up a couple more videos over here. Go check those out. Remember, if you like the video, please give me a thumbs up if you. And don't forget to subscribe to the channel so that you can see more videos just like this one. I'll see you guys in another lesson video.