How to Play Imagine by John Lennon on Guitar - Strumming & Fingerstyle

Hey, guitar enthusiast, Lauren Bateman here. This is my John Lennon Imagine guitar lesson. We're going to be going over the strumming patterns and I'm also going to give you some tips for some finger picking, if you're interested in that as well. So let's get into the guitar lesson.

So this is an amazing song by John and you know, we're going to talk about the chords first that he's using in this song. So, so the Imagine guitar chords are going to be a C, an F, an A minor, a D minor, a G chord and an E7 chord. And depending on whether you're strumming or whether you're going to be finger picking, I'll give you some different variations on how we're going to play that F chord in particular. But let's get into how we're going to strum the song first. So this song is done on a piano, but we're going to try and mimic it as much as possible with the guitar. And, and the way we're going to do that is we're going to do what I call bass strum. Okay? So you're going to play the bass note, the lowest note of the chord. So for our C chord, that's going to be the fifth string. Okay? That's going to be the fifth string. And then you're going to strum down on the rest of the string. So it's going to sound like this.

So it's an eighth note pattern, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And now for the F chord, if you're strumming, we're going to play the full chord.

Okay. And the bass note is the sixth string.

Now Lauren, what if I don't know bar chords? You can do the F major 7 chord.

It's just not going to sound as nice because of that open E string. But you would do the fourth string on that.

It'll get you through, it'll work. But the full F bar chord does sound the best. Alright, now for the other chords, A minor is going to be played the same way as the C.

Okay. D minor it would be. The fourth string is going to be your bass note.

And for the G and the E7 chords, it's going to be. That sixth string would be your bass note. Alright, so if I just play the intro. So the chord progression for the intro is going to be C, F, C. And if you want to pull up the chord chart so that you have it side by side with me, laurenbateman.com I'll put a link in the description below. It's going to be cf cf. It would sound like this.

So you can hear how we're trying to mimic what the piano is doing on this song. So the verse is pretty much the same progression as the intro. It's C, F, C, F, C, F, C, F. So there's nothing different there. The chorus, the timing of the chords change. And there is a really important timing aspect on this chorus. So we start with the F chord to an A minor chord. Okay? So each one of these is going to be two beats. So you're going to do that bass drum twice for each chord. So the F is going to be bass strum, bass strum, and then A minor. Bass strum, bass strum. Same for D minor. Okay. Bass, bass drum and then F.

Now this is where the timing change becomes important. On this third measure, we're going to do the G chord for three beats. So we're going to do it an extra beat. So you're going to get an extra bass drum on the G. And I'll play the whole thing through so you guys can hear it. But it'll sound like this. G, G, G, C. Okay? And then we're gonna strum G on the end. So again, it would be G.

C and G. Okay. All right, so let me just do a little playthrough for you guys here, okay? Of just that chorus section. So it's gonna be F.

A minor.

D.

F.

G, 2, 3, C, G. And then you let that G ring. You hold it and let it ring out. And then it gets back into.

Imagine there's no countries.

Okay, so those are how we're going to handle the verse in the choruses. What I want to talk about next is the bridge section, which. Where this E7 chord comes in. One more quick little strumming spice I want to give you guys for this chorus. So if you want to change up the dynamics of the song, if you don't always want to do this bass pluck the chorus and the bridge as well. Give us really good emotional opportunities to change up the strumming pattern for this song. So what you can do on the chorus or even this bridge is we can do it down, down, down, up.

Down, down, down, up, down, down, down.

So It's a little 16th note pattern. So it'll sound like this.

So hear that?

It's one, two and a three, four and a one, two and a three, 4, and a one, two and a 3, 4, 1.

So Im.

The people.

Living for today.

You so you can Add in that little spice. I think it's a really nice change from, you know, no hell below us.

Above us only sky.

Now change Imagine.

All the people so you can hear.

It adds like a really nice dynamic change. Same for the bridge.

You may say that I'm a dreamer.

Oh, but I'm not the only one.

So add in those little dynamic spices, it can really make the song come to life. Hey, hope you're enjoying this lesson so far. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on your notifications for this channel so that YouTube lets you know when I release more videos just like this one. So the bridge again, we have a lot of split measures, but we have this C to an E7 chord which adds this really cool sound to the song. So it starts like this. We got the F.

To G.

To.

C.

Now for E7, you could play the full the four fingered version if you want. I sometimes like just going with the two fingered version. And the two finger version is an E chord lifting up the third finger. I like it that way. I think that's pretty simple. It's also really easy to go from the C chord to this two fingered E7. Okay, so if you're not used to doing the four finger and getting the pinky down, that might be an option for you. And the chord progression here is F, G, C, E7, F, G, C. And it does that three times. And then on the final one we've got F.

G. And then we're gonna.

Hold on the C. So what I'm.

Gonna do real quick, just so you guys can hear this, I'm gonna do the strumming version. Before we get into how we're gonna do things finger picking wise, I'm just gonna do a quick verse, chorus, and bridge section for you guys so that you can play through everything. So let's start off with Imagine there's no countries. All right? And this will be our timing. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4m.

Imagine there's no countries.

It isn't hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for.

No religion.

Imagine all the people.

Living life in peace.

You.

You may say I'm a dreamer.

Oh, but I'm not the only one.

I hope someday you'll join us.

And the world will be as one.

So what we're gonna do next is we're gonna jump in to the finger picking section of the song and the little lick that you can add in when you're playing. All right, so I've put my pick down and what we're gonna Just go over how we're going to mimic what we just did in the strumming on finger picking. And what I would recommend doing is doing a bass pluck. Now for the F major chord, I would recommend you don't have to do a bar. Okay. Because I'm going to show you why in a minute because we're going to add in the little.

That little piece that you hear in the song.

You know, imagine there's no heaven.

That part there. So we're going to be adding in that little DDD and I'm going to show you how to do that. So all you hear, we're doing essentially the same thing we're doing with the strumming, except the bass is being handled by our thumb. So our thumb is going bass and then we're plucking. And I'm just using these two fingers, the first finger and the second finger. And for the C chord, I'm in most of the chords. It's going to be the bass note and the third, third and second string. The only chord I'm going to change it for is the F chord, because I'm not barring the chord. So I don't want to get these bottom strings. So I'm actually going to do the sixth string and then the fourth and third strings. Okay. So this will be the C chord.

F chord.

Has a darker sound. C.

To F.

Also leaves this B string open for the. For that little lick. So let's talk about that real quick. So after we do our F chord, which is going to be bass pluck, bass pluck, bass pluck. Now, we're only going to do that bass pluck three times because if you want to throw in this little lick, you have to leave that last beat for it. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 4e. And so it's going to be the second fret on the third string with your second finger. And guess what? The second finger is already in place because of the F chord. You're going to move the third finger down to play the third fret on that G string. And then you're just going to get the open string with your second finger, the open B string. So it's going to be first fingers picking, second fret, third fret on the G string. And then your second finger is going to pluck the open B string. So we've got.

Hear that.

So it's 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1, 2, 3, 4, E, M, 1, 2, 3, 4. And F2, 3, and 4 E M1.

Okay, so that's how we're going to throw that in here.

And other than that, there's really nothing else special about the finger picking version of this song. You would play it exactly the same way I just played it on the playthrough there. Even for the choruses, you can keep that F open if you want to.

Imagine all the people.

Living for today.

And on that G, just use your thumb to strum all the way out, all the way down. But other than that, there's really no difference between the finger picking and the strumming version of this song. So I hope you guys enjoyed this lesson. Make sure to give me a thumbs up. YouTube's gonna pop a couple more videos over there. Go check those out and hope to see you in a lesson real soon.