If You Could Read My Mind Guitar Lesson Fingerstyle

I heard a great classic on the radio the other day, if you read my mind by Gordon Lightfoot. And I said, I got to do a lesson on this song. So I'm going to show you how to go through this step by step. I'm going to show you how to strum it as well as how to finger pick.

So let's start off with the chords we're going to need. But first off, we do need a capo for this song. So I'm going to take my capro. Capro. Gonna take my cap. Capo. I'm going to put it on the second fret of the guitar. Okay? So all of my chords now are going to be relative to the capo. So if I say I'm going to play a G chord, it's going to be a G chord relative to the capo. So this capo acts like the nut of my guitar. Now people always ask me, where do I put this capo? You don't want it towards the back of the fret, more towards like the middle to the front of your fret. Okay. That's where you want that capo to be. So for the most part, we do have a lot of open chords. There is an F bar chord chord that comes in, but there is a slight variation that you could play on this as well since we're not playing the full. Since we're finger picking. But I'm going to show you all the chords first. We've got a G chord, a C chord, a D chord, and E minor chord. Love those four chords. You can play so many songs with them. We then have an A minor seven chord. Okay. We do have a G7 chord. If I can play it without muting any of the strings. See, I still mute strings too. And then we have this G slash, B chord. I'm probably going to. I know here I just did it with my pinky. I'm probably going to play it with my second and third fingers. And then we do that F chord. That's going to come in on this. This lesson as well here. So first things first, I'm going to show you how to finger pick this because this song is a finger picking song, but it could take you guys some time to really learn it. So I want to work on the timing through a strumming pattern first because I want to show you how you can. You can throw some dynamics into your strumming using very, very simple patterns and sound like a really, really cool song. So we're going to take a very simple Strumming pattern. It's going to be 1, 2, and 3 and 4. And 1, 2 and 3 and 4. And down, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, up. So we kind of got like this 8th note thing already going. So that's what we're going to be doing on our finger picking. We're working with 8th note patterns. Right? 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And so what I would recommend on this song is, is to really let those bass notes ring out. Okay, so I've got. Just for this first part of the verse, it's G and F. So I've got.

If you could remind my love what a tale my thoughts could tell all.

Right, so what am I doing on this strumming pattern? You can hear? I'm not just going.

I'm actually finessing the strumming pattern to make it sound a little bit like picking. Okay, so I'm accenting. Let's take our G chord here since that's going to be easier than the F. I'm hitting the bass note 1, 2, and 3 and 4. And 1, 2 and 3 and 4. And. And when I'm strumming the guitar, I'm going very lightly. And I'm only really hitting the treble notes on this.

I'm trying not to come all the way back up to the top of the chord. And I just lightly glazing the strings. And sometimes I'm hitting just the bottom two. Sometimes I'm just catching the middle three. I don't really have a rhyme or reason to it. I'm just trying to gently finesse the strum after I do the bass note. So it'.

So you can kind of see here on my strumming hand, you know, I. I'm sometimes catching two strings. I'm sometimes catching three strings. Maybe I'm only catching one string. So it sounds a little bit more like picking than just going.

But I'm using the same strumming pattern. It's still 1, 2, and 3 and 4, and 1, 2 and 3 and 4. And sometimes I might be throwing in a little bit of a down, down, up, up, down, up.

But I'm again, not strumming the entire guitar with each strumming pattern. So play around with a little bit of that because I think that would. That really sounds great over this song too, you know.

In a castle dark or a fortress strong with chains upon my feet, you know the ghost is me so see.

I'm kind of like. I'm kind of letting those notes drive the song. So that's a great way to start this song with some strumming. But if you want to get into some finger picking, I'm going to show you a couple of patterns that I think work really well over the song. All right, so I've now put my pick down and we have just our fingers here that we're going to be working with. Now if you don't know finger picking technique, the thumb is the P, index fingers I, middle finger is M. And then we have A, the index finger C is the pinky. But I don't think we're really going to be using that much here. Again, for this song, we're going to be doing an eighth note pattern. I would probably improvise a lot and I think Gordon's probably doing some improvisation. There is a little bit of patterns that I hear coming into the song and I'm going to show you a couple that I would probably use. But for me, again, I'm listening eighth notes. I would just randomly probably play a pattern, hitting any eighth notes that I can. That's the great thing about finger picking, okay, Is that.

It doesn't matter really what you're doing. If you stick within that eighth note pattern.

You stick within eighth notes and you just keep playing notes. It's not going to sound horrible. But I'm going to show you two patterns. The first one is, I think, what you really hear on the record at least when it starts for this G and the F chord. And then when we get into the more chord changes, there's a lot of improvisation, There's a lot of change that happens there. So what we're doing for this G chord is we're playing the bass note with the P, our thumb. Okay. And then we're going to play strings two, three, four, all right. With the fingers A M, I. Okay, A M, I. So it's going to be P, A M, I, A M, I, M.

Now you'll notice I've. I have this bad habit. I like to hold. I either have my pinky on the body of the guitar, I'm holding on to that high E string.

Gives me leverage. I don't think you're supposed to do that. I'm self taught too, mostly. So I do have some bad habits. But just if you guys saw me doing that, it's better for the pinky to be free, but I kind of use it as a leverage point. So if you're watching me do that, I know people ask me about that. It's just my bad habit. Sorry, I can't break it. So we got G, and we're playing strings six, two, three, four. Two, three, four, three. Okay.

If you go and you listen to the song, you're going to hear that pattern. That pattern is really what it sounds like. Then we would just do the same thing on the F chord.

Okay. Now, you heard me tell you earlier that there was a way to finagle this F if you didn't want to play it, at least for this first part. What I hear there's a bit of openness on the record. So you could just play the first finger on this F note here and the second finger on the second fret of the G string.

I don't know what chord that is, but it has a much more open feel to it. But you could totally use that. Even with the G chord, you don't even need the second finger.

Okay.

That's what it would sound like with the regular F chord. So again, there's an option. If you can't play that bar chord, I recommend you try. But if you can't, that is an option for that F chord. A little bit more of an open sound to it. And I think that's more of what you hear here on the record, too. So. So take a listen to the record, see which one you like best. So that's what I would use for at least the first eight measures of the song. We've got double G, double F, double G, double F. All right. And that's gonna work out great. And then we start getting into the part where it's like in a castle.

Dark A castle dark and fortress strong with chains upon my feet now, you.

Could keep using that pattern all the way through. I think it'll work perfectly fine.

I've not been a fortress strong with chains upon my feet.

Okay, now you.

Probably heard the D chord just as a note for the D chord. We have to adjust our hand.

Okay. We have to adjust the thumb down to that fourth string. So now we're playing the fourth string. And then 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3, 2. Okay, but you could use that.

And you know the ghost is me.

I will never be set free as long as I'm a ghost you can.

See.

But as you can see, you heard on that G chord, I started. I don't even know what I did. I just started improvising a little bit. So you could use that same pattern all the way through something.

I.

Another pattern I want to show you that I think works really well in this section is something with, like, A double bass note. I'm going to show. Show it to you first, and then I'll play it for you all. I'm going to play it for you first, and then I will show you. Here we go.

Okay, so what am I doing here? Very, very. You know, again, I. It's just an eighth note pattern. You literally can play anything you want over these chords as long as an eighth note pattern and you stay in time. What am I doing here? I'm focusing primarily on the bottom three strings. All right? So I basically have I, M, A on the bottom three strings. And I'm playing the P as the. The top bass note of each chord. So for this G chord, I'm starting off with P I, M, A, M, I, P, I. Okay.

One and two and three and four. And so I'm getting a bass note on one and a bass note on four.

And you don't have to always, do I. You could change it up.

Okay. So that's how you can add some variation into the picking, because that's what happens in these songs. You'll hear these notes. For example, on this G7 chord.

This. You know, we want to get that note, okay? Because if I play a G chord.

Then I play a G7 chord, it doesn't sound any different. That note is very important. So that's why at this point, I like changing it up a little bit.

Okay. So I can get that, that. That Note on the G7 and then the c. Ch.

Same thing, except we're starting on the fifth string. So it's going to be. The fifth string is the bass note.

Okay. And then the D chord, same thing, except the D string is the bass note now.

Okay? So those are the two picking patterns you can use. And again, when I get into the song and I start singing, I'm going to start improvising. All right? I'm not going to worry about what my fingers are going to do. The muscle memory in my hand is going to start kicking in. And I would encourage you on this to play around with that and experiment with that. These two patterns are frameworks, but don't be afraid to go outside of the framework. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to do a little intro and a verse for you guys just so you can hear it. But again, the goal is for you to take this explore. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. That's how you become better finger picker and a better guitar player. One, two, ready? And.

If you could remind my love what a tale thoughts you tell.

Just like an old time movie about a ghost from a wishing well in a castle dug or a fortress.

Chains upon my feet. You know the ghost is me.

I will never be set free just as long as I'm ghost that you can't see.

If you enjoyed this finger picking song, then I highly recommend you go check out my finger picking playlist right over there where I teach you how to play great songs like Dust in the Wind, Landslide and More. Go check out that playlist right now.