HOW TO STRUM: Go Your Own Way Guitar Lesson by Fleetwood Mac

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. I'm going to show you a really fun song to play by Fleetwood Mac called Go youo Own Way. I'm going to show you a couple different ways to strum along and have fun with this song. And I'm going to show you step by step. Let's get into it.

So first things first, let's talk about the chords you're going to notice. I have a capo on my guitar. It's on the third fret. So all of these chords are what we call relative to the capo. All right, so we're starting off with a D chord, regular D major chord. Then we have a DSUS 2. If you. You don't know what a DSUS 2 is, if you know a D chord, all you have to do is lift up your second finger, okay. So it has a very nice open sound, those suspended chords. Next we have an A major chord, okay. And you can play that A whichever way you want. I like to play mine first, second and third fingers, but whatever way is most comfortable for you. We then have a G major chord, okay. Regular G major chord. And again, you can play that any way you want. Then we have B minor, okay. We have a B minor bar chord, which puts this song a little bit more to late beginner, early intermediate because of that bar chord and some of the strumming stuff we're going to be doing here. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to show you a couple different strumming patterns, alright? But there's a couple caveats to them going to talk about that right now. The first strumming pattern I'm going to show you is pretty much what it sounds like they're doing on the record. Now understand there's a lot of improvisation, there's a lot of variation. This is Fleetway Mac. There's multiple guitars. So the song starts mostly with a electric guitar kind of hanging out on an F power chord. And we're going to be playing one of the acoustic guitar parts. And we're going to start off with that DSUS2 and we're basically going to be alternating between DSUS2 and D. Let me play it first and then I'm going to explain what's happening.

You're always like, yeah, that's. That's the sound. That's what I'm going for. So this intro does not start on a downbeat where we would think like the song starts on one, but the acoustic guitar comes in on the up strum of a four beat. So this first drum is the and after four. Four and okay. And then we don't have a down strum on one. That's what makes this timing a little bit interesting. Our next up strum is the and after one and that's a D chord. Then we have a down strum on the 2 which is a dsus 2. And then we have an up strum on the and after two which is back to D. So we've got and, and two and okay. And then it just loops again. Now we're getting into a round around the end of four and we've got.

And, and two and and and two and.

Alright, so this is what it's going to sound like. So just listen. I'll play it really slowly and watch my fingers. You're going to see the second finger lifting up and down depending on what strum I'm on.

So you're going to hear this type of strumming pattern throughout the intro and into the verses. Except sometimes, like for example, we get to this A chord and you're going to hear a lot of eighth note strumming.

So just be aware that that does come in over the verses. So what I like to do with this song, because if I were singing this song, I probably wouldn't continue with that intro strumming pattern. I probably probably would change it more to a straight eighth note. I'm going to show you guys how you can add some dynamics if you want to sing and play the song at the same time. It's kind of like my specialty. If you guys don't know me. My name is Lauren Bateman and I help make the guitar make sense, especially for older learners. I love teaching people how to have fun with the guitar. So let's take this verse. Okay, so if you want to play your intro like that, totally fine. That's how they do it. That, that's that sound that you're hearing. If I were going to sing this, I would switch the strumming pattern over to more of a straight eighth note pattern. So 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 played all down ups.

And if you want to get a little bit of that.

Okay, you can get a little bit of that D sound in there. I think I was doing 1 and.

2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

So on the and of one that UPSTROM I'm going just like the intro we did, the up strum was a D chord. So I'm kind of introducing that a little bit without fully doing the intro. All right, so we've got a D chord. If you want to follow along with my notes, go to my website. We have all the chords written out there with the lyrics. And we're going to do two measures of D.

Followed by a regular measure of DSUS 2.

Then we got an A chord. Now that A chord you could stick with the up and down strumming, but if you listen to the song it becomes a little more aggressive. So I would probably switch to all downs.

And then when I get to the G chord, I switch the strumming up again. Alright, so you can see we're building kind of like a story here. We're adding dynamics. So I'm going to go through this and play it for you guys so that you can hear it and we'll play it together on the G chord now. And from here on out, I'm kind of getting really aggressive on that first strum and I'm letting it ring. So I'm not doing an up strum after the 1. So it's going 1, 1, 2 and 3 and 4. And.

Hear that?

So I'm really strumming hard. I'm accenting that first down strum on the 1 and then it's just a regular 2 and 3 and 4m. Alright, so you guys can hear how this sounds. I'm going to play through a verse before we jump into the chorus. All right. Because there's a lot of fun that happens on the chorus. But first let's. Let's get through this verse section. So let me play through and show you how it's going to sound. All right, ready? 1, 2, 1, 2. Ready? And.

Just get that strumming in your hand.

Ready?

Loving you isn't the right thing to.

Do.

How can I ever change things that I feel.

If I could maybe I give you my words.

How can I when you won't take it from me?

All right, and you can see on that last son. We're going into the chorus now. So I added a little bit of a crescendo on that D.

I kind of played that D chord a little bit more aggressively and that just so you know, you could play that A chord in the verse that way too. So you heard. It's like a little bit of dynamics in that verse. I started on the D, we went aggressively on the G, we came back to the D, kind of brought it back down again and then really dug in. There's. You can Hear it go. Listen to the record. You can hear this up and down on the sound levels of the guitar. So I think it's very important that you practice that when doing this song. So now let's talk about what's going on in the chorus. There's going to be a lot of strumming going on here, so you might need to practice your down strums. So at this point we're jumping into the chorus and we have the introduction of our B minor chord. All right. Then we have a G chord and then a chord and it kind of repeats that. All right. And we're just going to do all eighth notes and they're going to be all downs. So it's going to be fast. Okay. So it's going to be.

Now could you do this all as power chords if you didn't want to play that B minor chord? Absolutely. You could do a B power chord to a G to an A.

B to G to A.

Alright. And you can get as fancy as you want with the strumming here. And I'm going to play through the chorus for you. I hear a lot of improvising. Here's some extra strumming going in there. So think of the eighth notes as a framework to build off of and that you can add and embellish this as much as you want. So let's play through this chorus and then we're going to put everything together. Ready? One, two, and go.

You can go your own way. Go your own way. You can call it another.

You can go your own way.

All right, so you can see, you can jump right back in to the intro after that. So what I'm going to do now, I want to play through a full verse and a full chorus for you guys so that you can practice going along with this. And if I'm going too fast, this is a fast song. If I'm going too fast, use the settings cog down there to slow things down a little bit and repeat this as many times as you need. Save this section and keep coming back and practicing with me. 1, 2, 1, 2. Ready? M.

Here we go.

Loving you isn't the right thing to do.

How can I ever change things that I feel?

If I could maybe I'd give you my word.

How can I when you won't take it from me?

You can go your own way.

Go your way.

You can call me.

Now you can see. This is such a fun and high energy song. Even on that chorus, I started throwing in some accents on those eighth notes. So there's really a lot you can do to embellish this song. It is so much fun. Now, if you're really into Fleetwood Mac and you want to start learning how to do some finger picking, I would highly recommend going and checking out my Landslide video right over there, where I'm going to show you how to finger pick the song step by step.