Lauren Bateman teaches the strumming pattern for Neil Young's Harvest Moon, breaking down the swung rhythm as triplets and showing how to alternate D and Dmaj7 in the intro. Higher-neck voicings get you closer to the original recording.
Questions this video answers
March 26, 2022
A, B minor (Bm), D, E minor (Em), G, D major 7 (Dmaj7)
Down, down, up, up, down, up (played with a swung/triplet feel).
The intro alternates D → Dmaj7, with the chord change occurring on an upbeat (the final up after beat 4).
A D-shaped power/chord on 7th fret (bottom three strings), a Bm/D (bar at 7th fret), and a Dmaj7/A (barred at 7th fret with pinky on 9th fret bass string).
Chapters
Because I'm still in love with you Wanna see you dance again. Cause I'm still in love with you.
On this harvest.
Hey, guitar enthusiasts, I have a very awesome late beginner guitar song here for you. Harvest Moon by Neil Young. I'm gonna be showing you some fun strumming patterns, but I'm also going to show you some different ways to spice up the intro for this song. Let's get into it.
So towards the end, when we get into spicing up the intro, I will show you some other chords. But the main chords we're going to be using for this tutorial are going to be an A chord, a B minor chord, a D chord, E minor, G, and a D major 7 chord, which if you've never played it, looks like an A chord on the bottom three strings. I like to play mine barred. But if you're not someone who's good at bar chords, you can just use the first, second and third fingers. And for that B minor chord, again, if you're not really good at bar chords, you can always do one of the simplified B minor chords to, you know, to substitute for those harder chords. So before we talk about what we're going to do for the intro, let me just talk about the general strumming pattern we're going to be using for all of our other chords outside of this intro. And when this intro, it's like a theme, it keeps coming back into the song. So let's start with our G chord. Okay. And it's just going to be a down, down, up, up, down, up. Okay. One, two and. And four and. But Harvest Moon has more of a swung feel to it. So instead of it being really rigid and straight, 1, 2 and. And 4 and 1, 2 and 4 and 1, 2 and M4 and has more of a.
You always tell people, because if you have a hard time getting this swung feel, think of it as triplets. One, two, A four, A one, two, a four. Because it'll. It gives you that different spacing. One, two, A, A four, A, one, two, A, A four, A.
And that's the strumming pattern we're going to be using for the majority of the song outside of these intro sections. So let's talk about the simplified version and then I'll give you a more intricate one a little bit later. So this intro moves between a D chord and that D major 7 chord that I showed you. Okay, what we're going to be doing is we're just going to be doing 1, 2, and on the D chord that's it. 1, 2, and 3, 4. 1, 2 and 3, 4. So you're letting it ring. So if you're used to. Not used to like, letting your chords ring out, we're going to be doing that here. So it's 1, 2, and now on the last and the last up after the four, we're going to switch to a D major seven. So it's 1, 2, and 3, 4. And. Okay, up strum 1, 2, and 3 and 4. And one more time. 1, 2, and 3 and four. And. All right, so that is our transition. It's a little bit of a hopped rhythm here that we're doing. We're changing the chord earlier than we usually would, not on the downbeat, but on the upbeat. And then once we change over that D major 7, we have the and after 4, the first up. Then we have two more ups after that, the and after 1, the and after 2. And then we have 3. And so that's our first down is on the 3, 3. And so all together with the D chord, it's 1, 2, and 3, 4. And. And. And 3 and 1, 2 and 3, 4, and and.
And 3.
Now, if we put this all together in context of the song, what's it going to sound like? Well, it'll sound like this.
I'm a little closer Hear what I have to say.
Just like children sleeping we could dream a night away.
So you can hear throughout the verse that that intro theme keeps coming in. And all we're doing is alternating between a G chord, doing one strumming pattern, and then that D and D major pattern. It's a very, very cool sound. So keep practicing. That might be difficult for you at first to go between the two. I would just go very slowly.
One, two, and.
And four and one, two, and.
Back.
So I would practice going between those two different strumming patterns, those two different feels, because one's a little bit more open because there's less strumming. Might be difficult at first, but keep going back and forth. And now let's talk about what we're going to do in our chorus section. So the chorus section, we get a few more chords. We have our G, our A, our E minor. And then again at the end, we have that D to D major section. And we get to stay on each of these chords twice. The strumming patterns, all the first strumming pattern, except at the end. So we have 1, 2, ready, M.
Cause I'm still in love with you I want to see you dance again Because I'm still in love with you.
On this harvest.
Now, if you listen to the record, Neil is doing something a little bit more intricate, a little bit more difficult, and he's actually playing things up here on the guitar versus keeping them in the open position. Now, if you keep everything in the open position down here, it makes it much easier. But I want to show you guys a little extra spice if you want to sound a little bit more like the record. So we're going to be introducing three chord variations. We have a D chord, just like a backwards power chord here on the fifth string. Seventh fret. Seventh fret. Okay. We're just playing the bottom three strings. And then we have a B minor D, which we're going to bar. Or you could, if you don't want to bar, you can make it look like an A. Almost sounds like we're doing something from Hotel California. So we've got bar at the seventh fret. Okay. And then the next chord is going to be a D major with an A in the bass. I like barring, because it makes grabbing this. I usually grab it with my pinky. You can grab it with your third finger, too, if you want to. But this is the shape we're going to be doing. So it's everything barred at the seventh fret. Okay. On the fourth string, third string, and second string. And then the pinky, I like to use my pinky because it's easier for me to stretch. Gets the ninth fret on the bottom string. So to review them all again, we've got the D chord here.
Okay. Then we've got our B minor slash D. Okay. And then we have our D major 7 slash A. So you can hear we're getting. Because we're playing higher up in the neck, we're getting much brighter tones and sounds coming out of the guitar. One more time through them all, we get D, the B minor D, and then D major 7 with an A. Okay. So our rhythm's just gonna be a little bit different in terms of where we're changing the chords. The rhythm is exactly the same. Showed you before. It's going to be down, down, up, up, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, up, up, down. So that rhythm is not changing. Where we play the chords is changing. So we're going to take the first chord now, and it's going to be played on that first one. And then the next down, up is going to be the second chord. So that B minor slash D. So we have D for I and then two. And is the second chord B minor D. So it's.
Okay.
All right, so now that you get the feel for that, the rhythm, all the next ups are going to be the fourth chord.
Okay, up, up, up, down, up. So we've got.
So this is obviously going to be a little bit more movement for you because you're going from a G chord and you're going to have to come up here to this D note. If you want to throw this into the mix, you don't have to. Maybe you just play it at the intro and then you use the other version throughout the song. Whatever is easiest for you, do that. Remember, it's about having fun first, not being per. But it would sound like this.
Hey, guys, have so much fun with this lesson. If you're a huge Neil Young fan, go check out my Heart of Gold lesson over there where I'm going to show you step by step how to do bass walk downs and really cool hammer ons. For the intro of the song. Go click on that lesson and I'll see you there.
