How To Play Johnny B Goode On Guitar With Only 1 Finger!

Now, this is a Johnny B. Goode lesson that is for absolute beginners. You're gonna need at least one finger to play this song, Potentially two, if you like to spice it up a little bit. This song does require a capo. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna get this little capo, which is a clamp, and we're gonna put it on the first fret of the guitar. And the reason why we're doing this is because the original song is in the key of what we call B flat, which. Which would require us to play a bunch of different power chords, which isn't so bad. But with the capo on the guitar, we can play in the original key of the song, which means you can play along with the record. But it requires us only needing one finger, believe it or not. I'm going to show you how.

So the power chords we're going to be using are open power chords. It's going to be an A5, a D5, A, and an E5 power chord. Let's go and find these chords first, and then we're gonna learn how to play the song. So A five, we're gonna have the open A string, okay, which is the a fifth string here. And we're gonna put our first finger on the second fret of the D string, okay? And you're gonna try as best as possible to play those two strings together. So it's a sound like that. So just try doing that. Okay, so that's our A5 power chord. Now to get power chord, guess what? We're gonna want the D string, our fourth string, to ring open. And then we're just gonna move that second finger down one string. So now we're on the second fret of the G string, and we're gonna try and play the middle two strings, the D and G string, at the same time.

Okay, very good. And the Last chord is E5, which means we're gonna have the E string, this top string is gonna be ringing open, and we're going to be fretting the second fret on that A string, okay? So you're going to be playing those two strings together.

Okay, so let's go through that again. We have a five.

Okay. Then we have D5.

And then we have E5.

So you see, just by moving this one finger up and down the strings on this second fret, we can actually play three chords. And for a lot of songs, that's all you need is three chords to have a really, really great song. Now, the Cool thing about this song. I'm going to show you two ways to play it. One's a little bit easier, the other has a little spice, which I think you guys are gonna like. But first I want to talk about the structure of the song. This song is written in what we call a 12 bar blues form format, okay? It's a very, very simple structure that's used in. In pretty much every single blues song you could think of. So we're going to be starting off with our A chord, all right? And we're going to play that four times in a row. Then we're going to move to our D chord and we're going to play that twice. Then we're going to go back to the A chord, play that twice. And then we're going to play the E chord twice and then the A chord twice. And what do I mean by twice? We're going to be playing them for a full measure. And each one of those measures we're going to be playing the down strum of that chord eight times. So it's going to sound like this 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. OK, so you're going to do eight downs. The way I counted that 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and those are called eighth notes. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4and all downs.

Okay? So we're gonna do that on the A chord. We're gonna do that four times. Okay? And that's how we're gonna start the song. Then like I said, D. We're gonna do it twice. Back to A twice, E twice, A twice. I'm gonna go slow. This song is very fast. So if you listen to the record, you're really gonna be going.

So the song is really flying. But for now we're gonna take our time. Go nice and slow. Count it out. Okay, let's. We're gonna go through this 12 bar blues format. I'm gonna put that up there on the screen for you guys to follow along. Here we go. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and a and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And.

Here comes D.

1 and 2 and to A.

Here comes that e.

And a.

Now once you get the hang of that, you would rip. Repeat that for the entire song. But if you want to add another cool spice, we can get a second finger involved in our playing to do something that sounds like this.

All right, what am I doing there? It's kind of like that classic blues rock or that Classic blues sound. Now, the difference between this Johnny B. Goode song and what we would call a traditional blues shuffle. So like a blues shuffle, you would play this.

Okay? The difference between blues and rock and roll, like this Chuck Berry song is we are on a straight beat.

Where blues has a shuffle.

Okay? That's the difference. So this is more of a rock and roll. Rock. Rock and roll blues song. So it's got a straight beat. So what are we doing here? We're taking those same three chords we just learned. All right? The A5, the D5 and the E5 power chord. And we're just adding one finger. Now, for most people, it's going to be the third finger. But I know there's. I teach a lot of older students. If you guys don't know who I am, my name is Lauren Bateman and I specialize in working with absolute beginners. Especially, especially older adults over the age of 50. And a lot of my students, they have arthritis in their fingers. So sometimes, especially when you're just getting started, you may not have the stretch in that third finger. So some people ask me, lauren, I can use my pinky. Does that work? Absolutely. So if your pinky is the much more comfortable finger, since you're just getting started, use the pinky. But ideally, down the road, we want to try and get the hand stretched out enough that we could use the third finger comfortably. So what we're doing is we're taking that eighth note pattern we've learned 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. And we're trying to be like a drum. All right? So when you hear music, the drum, the snare is usually on 2 and 4. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And you can see my third finger is hitting the fourth fret on the same string as my first finger. So I'm kind of going.

Okay, so this is why it's very important at this stage to get both of those strings. Because if you're just getting the first string.

You'Re not going to get the sound of that other finger. You're definitely going to be hitting both strings.

So it'll be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. So you're just hitting that one note on 2 and 4 and the same thing for the D chord, alright? If you move your fingers down, it's going to be the same rhythm. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 M and then the E chord, same thing.

So if you want to try practicing along either of these methods, I'm going to do a quick playthrough of Johnny B. Dude. We're going to do a verse and a chorus here just to get you through a little bit of the song so that you can play along. And if I'm going too fast, of course you can always use the settings cog to slow me down because I'm going to play this a little bit more to the speed of the record. Let's start us off with an intro so we can go through that pattern one time. Then we're going to do a verse and a chorus. Ready? Here we go. One, two, a one, two. Here we go.

Deep down Louisiana Close to New Orleans Way back up in the woods among the evergreens There stood a long cabin made of a van wool we live a country boy named Johnny Be good who never ever learn a reader rhyme so well but he can play the guitar like he's ringing a bell Go.

Johnny Go go Go Johnny go go Go Johnny go go Go Johnny go.

Whoa.

Johnny Big oo.

If you really like the technique I showed you at the end and are looking for another great song to play, practice, go check out my Mustang Sally lesson right over there.