How To Play Landslide On Guitar by Fleetwood Mac Acoustic FINGERSTYLE Lesson

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome back. Lauren here. And in this video, we're going over a classic by Fleetwood Mac called Landslide. I'm going to show you how to finger pick this song. It's a really great lesson in learning how to finger pick. So let's get into the lesson.

So we're going to break this lesson down into three parts. First, we're going to go over the chords for the verse, and we're going to go over how to transition from the verse into the chorus. And then finally, we're going to go over how to play the chorus section of the song. So the first thing we're going to talk about is the verse. But first, let's talk about the chords that we're going to be using in the verse. Now, fortunately, the great thing about Landslide is that it is a very repetitive song and that the sections repeat a lot. So this verse section is just three chords, and we played them in a series of four. And I'll show you what that means. And then we just keep repeating that over and over again until we get to that transition period. So the chords we're using for this verse, first off, you'll notice I have a capo. I have my orange capo here on the third fret. Now, if you don't have a capo yet, you want to get one. I put a link below the description where you can buy my Kaiser capos here. But first off, we're going to be starting on the third fret with the capo. So basically, you just clutch the capo. You clip it on at the third fret, and we're going to play all the chords relative to the capo. So this capo now acts as the nut of our guitar. So the first chord we're going to play is just a regular C major chord. So hopefully you all know that one. You're all going to know the A minor chord. It's another chord. Chord you might not know is this G B chord.

Which is the pinky on the third fret of the second string, and the second finger on the second fret of the fifth string. So to go from that. So we're going to be going from a C chord to that G B. You'd want to move your second finger up one, and then your pinky comes.

To this third fret up the second string. Now, the cool thing about this, since our next chord is A minor, we don't even have to lift up this first finger. We can just go straight into A minor and back to the G B so let me show you guys that in a little bit more of a close up. So this is C major. We're going to move the second finger up one string, remove the third finger and place the pinky, the second string, third fret. Now you can lift up the first finger if you want to, but you don't have to because this pinky finger is blocking that string. And then A minor.

So we have C.

G slash, B.

A minor, G slash, B. One more time. C.

So that's where I start. All of my students with this song is just transitioning and strumming through the chords before we even getting to the finger picking. So just practicing going C, G slash, B, A minor, G slash, B. Because that's the progression if you hear it.

And that's all we're going to be doing in the verse is those four chords. So now once you get that down, let's jump into how to pick the four chords. Now, finger picking isn't your strong suit. I would highly recommend maybe subscribing to my guitar course, which has a whole section on developing finger picking to play songs just like this. But if you want to give it a go, let's jump into it. So the great thing about this verse section is that all of these chords are five string chords, which means going to learn one pattern and we're going to play it for every single chord, which is the great thing about this song. So usually the way we practice it is we practice the chords, we practice the patterns, and then we work through the progression. So here's the pattern. Starting with the C major chord, the thumb is going to be alternating between the fifth string and the fourth string. So just start with that.

5, 4, 5, 4.

And then all we're gonna do is with our other fingers, we're gonna put notes in between those thumbs. So thumb is holding on the bass line. On the downbeat, the sun just shone really bright, so I had to turn my camera down. So back to where we were. Our thumb is alternating between the bass notes, the fifth string, and the fourth string. And then what we're gonna do is the first finger, second finger, and third finger are going to own. The first finger is going to own the third string. The second finger is going to own the second string, and the third finger is going to own the bottom string. Now I'll show you how to use that third finger. But for the most part, for this song, we're going to be using the first and second fingers. So again, the first finger owns the third string. The second Finger owns the second string, and the thumb is going to be playing one of these top three strings, depending on the chord. So back to our C chord. So the first pattern is going to be thumb on the fifth string and then your first finger. So I'm just going to call the finger numbers because if these fingers own the same string, it doesn't matter what you're playing on the chord. It'll be fine. Just remember that the thumb is going to alternate. So thumb, fifth string, first finger, and then thumb on the fourth string.

So it's thumb, one thumb, thumb one, thumb.

So it's fifth string, first finger, fourth string.

Okay, and then after that, we're gonna play the second finger. So it's thumb, first finger, thumb, second finger. Great. And then back to thumb. So thumb first finger, thumb, second finger, back to thumb, then back to first finger, and then thumb.

Do you hear that?

So it's thumb, 1, thumb, 2, thumb, 1 thumb.

There it is.

So if I play it a little bit faster, up to speed to song, you'll start hearing it.

That's the pattern.

So it's again, thumb, 1, thumb, 2, thumb, 1 thumb.

And that's going to be played 1.

And 2 and 3 and 4.

That's the timing of this pattern. Now, when we go to that second chord, the G B, it's the same pattern. All we've done is switch the chord.

Thumb one thumb, two thumb, one thumb.

Did I put. Yes, that's right. And then same thing for a minor.

Thumb 1, thumb, 2 thumb, 1 thumb.

And then back to D or the g B.

Thumb, 1 thumb, 2 thumb, 1 thumb.

So that'll sound like this.

You hear it now, don't you? Yeah. The great thing about this song is as soon as you start playing that, everyone knows that you're playing a landslide. It's a great song. And that's it for the verse. Okay, so what I would recommend you do, the first thing we talked about was playing the chords over and over just so you can get the chord progression down. The second thing I would do, don't worry about switching chords yet. Just stay on a C chord and just work on this picking pattern because you're going to want to get that down pat before you start switching between chords. So that's what I do. Start with the verse, practice that. And then what we're going to do next is I'm going to show you how to transition from the verse into the chorus. So there's nothing too crazy about this chord transition, except that at the very end of our progression, when we play our A minor chord, instead of going back to the G B chord, what we're going to do is we're going to play a D7 chord. But we're going to play it in a way that you might not expect we're playing it. So usually a D7 chord is played like this. Okay, so we have the D7 and R7. Third finger is usually playing the bottom string here. Well, what we want to do is we're going to move this note up into the bass. Because we're finger picking and it's all about bass notes when you're finger picking. So what we're going to do to do this transition from A minor, we're going to take. And I'll do a close up too. We're going to take our top finger, which is the second finger, and we're going to raise it all the way to the top string. So now we kind of got this F sharp relative to the capo on the top string. So it's the A minor chord. You're going to take that second finger and you're going to lift it to the top string. And let me show you that on the close up just so you can see what we're doing. So here's the A minor. So basically I've gone through and I've played, you know, my picking for here and here and then I've ended up on A minor. Now I'm going to take this top finger and I'm just going to reach it up to this F sharp note again. So it's A minor top finger, lift it up, bring it up to the F sharp here on the top note. So instead of playing our D7 this way, we're moving this note. We want this bottom note up here. But this is kind of awkward to play, so it's much easier to go from A minor and just lift that top finger up to the top string. So let me show you how to pick it now. So now that you know how to switch from the A minor to the D7, let's talk about how we're going to pick the D7 chord. So it's a six string chord. And this is important because now in this transition from the verse to the chorus, we're going from five string chords to six string chords. So our picking is going to change just a little bit. Not a lot. We have to adjust for a six string chord. So if we have our D7 set up here, instead of the thumb alternating between five and four, the thumb is now going to alternate between six and four.

That's the only difference, six and four. The rest of the pattern is the same. So it's thumb on the sixth string, first finger, thumb on the fourth string, second finger, thumb one. I think that's it.

Thumb, one, thumb, two thumb, one thumb.

Sorry, I forgot the thumb on the end. I knew I was missing something. All right, so it's going to be.

Thumb, 1, thumb, 2 thumb, 1 thumb.

And like I said, the thumb is just alternating between the sixth and the fourth string on this. Now, after the D7, our chord progression changes. Now we're in the chorus. So we're going to start on a G chord. Now, if you want a brighter sound, you can. You could use what I might like stuck like glue cords, which is the pinky. And the third finger. It's going to give us a little bit of a brighter sound, which you might want on the chorus or you might not. I like it for, you know, the E minor chord. I like to brighten up the chorus. So usually on the G, this, D, F sharp and the E minor, I'm usually going to have my bottom two fingers glued to the third fret on the first and second strings. So now if we apply that pattern to our next chord, which is the.

G, we have thumb, one thumb, two thumb, one thumb.

Okay.

That'S our G chord. Now we're going to go to a D, F sharp. What we're going to do is get rid of our second finger. And again, I'll do a close up after this, move the first finger up to the F sharp again and play the same thing.

Okay, so we have our F sharp. Then after that, we're going to move to E minor 7 and play the same thing.

And that gets played twice.

And then after that, we're going to work through the chord, the chords for the verse. So it's going to be a C chord.

G, B chord in A minor. Pick the same way we just did before. At the end of that again, we're going to go to D7.

Okay, we're going to play to D7. And then we're just going to run through that again. So it's going to be G.

D, F sharp, E minor twice. And then we have C, G, B, A minor. And then at the end of this chorus, we just go back into the verse. And to get back into the verse after that, A minor, all you're going to do is go back to G, B. And that's how you get into the verse. All right, Just so you guys can see the chorus change. So we went from a minor to D7, right? And then we're doing these stuck like glue G chords, G.

And then top finger goes away. First finger moves up one string, we have a D, F sharp. And then we're just going to move to E minor 7. And then back to C, G, B, A minor, and then back to D7. G.

Remove the second finger. First finger comes up, it's a little walk down to E minor 7 and then G.

And then to go back to the chorus, we just go right back to G. And then we're back into our chorus. So let me play through that real quick so that you guys can see how it sounds.

Here it is.

I've been afraid of changing Cause I built my life around you.

With time makes us bolder and children get older I'm getting older too.

Here comes back. Now we're back into the verse.

And that's how you work through from that verse into the chorus and back out to the verse again. Now, I mentioned earlier in the video I was going to show you how to use the third finger. So if you don't want to always just play the same thing and you want to spice it up. I like something spicing things up a little bit in the chorus to make them different is instead of playing the second finger, we can play the third finger. So if I go back to my G chord here, we can play thumb one, thumb three. Now we're catching that bottom E string.

So we got thumb one, thumb three, Right thumb one, thumb three.

There it is.

Thumb one, thumb three. Okay, so it's thumb one, thumb three, thumb one, thumb.

So if you want to add that in, that might be a nice little spice to add on this minor since you hold it twice. The first time play the regular pattern.

And then the second time play the other pattern.

So if I wanted to add a little spice to that chorus, it would sound like this. So we've got.

Do you hear that high note that came in on that E? So that's something you can do. And you can do that in the verses and in the choruses too. There's one last piece of this song that I want to go over. So the. The version I've been doing it off of is a live version that Fleetwood Mac does. And there's a dramatic pause that comes in in the middle of our finger picking. So it's the. The very last verse. It's when that part. If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills we've kind of got started with the picking.

If you see my reflection in the.

Snow covered hills, there's this pause.

Well, maybe.

And then we start picking again on Landslide.

The landslide will bring it, but we're going much slower down.

All.

The landslide will bring it.

And then we're going to end on a minor, which doesn't provide much resolution to the song. Kind of ends the song in a very, very tense way. Hope you guys enjoyed my Landslide tutorial. If you want to learn more about finger picking, you can check out my course, which I'll put in the description below. You can. You guys can learn how to do a little bit more on the finger picking side of things. Hope to see you guys in another lesson. If you want to learn more about finger picking, I'll put a finger picking song over here as well as a song that YouTube's going to recommend for you to watch.