Lauren Bateman teaches a beginner-friendly guitar lesson for Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt." The lesson explains verse fingerpicking (three-chord progression: A minor for a full measure, then C and Dsus2 splitting a measure) with specific thumb/bass and finger-pluck patterns, and a louder chorus strumming pattern (chords: G → Am7 → Fadd9/A → C) played as straight eighth notes with accented downbeats to mimic piano-driven dynamics. She also describes the outro and repeats the progression, offers chord-chart availability on her website, and gives shoutouts to supporters.
Chapters
Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. In this video we're gonna do an amazing song by Johnny Cash called Her. As you can see, I've got my black shirt on to represent the man in black. This was the last song he recorded and did a music video for before his death. And I had a lot of students who requested this song, so I wanted to do it. If you need the chord chart, go to laurenbateman.com I'll put a link below the video so that we can go through this too together.
A very quick shout out to a couple students. I do want to let you guys know that I appreciate the donations you've been sending in. You guys are awesome. So Ronald Marmo, Reza Hill and Theodore Gonzal, I guess, just to name a few, thank you so much for your donations. Truly appreciate it. I put a lot of work into these videos, so thank you so much. So let's get started with the song lesson. So in this song we're going to be doing a little bit of finger picking, mostly for the verse sections. And then for the choruses, we're going to be picking up the dynamics and really strumming a lot of the chords. Now if you've listened to this song and you've watched the music video, there's a lot of emotion in this song which we're going to try and get in the choruses on that strumming. But first, let's start off with the verses. So there's three chords we're going to use. We're going to use an A minor chord, pretty simple, a C major chord. And the last chord is going to to be a DSUs2. So if you know a D major chord, all you have to do is lift up the bottom finger and that is a DSUS 2. Okay, so that bottom E string is going to ring open. So once again, the chords are going to be A minor, C major and Dsus 2. Now what we're going to be doing is the A major chord gets a full measure, so it's going to get four beats. Then the C and that DSUS chord are going to be splitting a measure, so there'll be two beats. So let's talk about the picking that we're going to use for each of these chords individually. Starting with the A minor with finger picking, the thumb controls the bass note. So the thumb really owns these top three strings. The rest of my fingers on this A, we're going to be using the bottom three fingers on the first, first finger on the third string, second finger on the second string, third finger on the third string. Let me do a really quick close up to show you guys, just so you can see on this. A minor. So I'm going to be playing the bass notes, all right, with my thumb and then the bottom three strings. We have the first finger on the third string, second finger on the second string, third finger on the bottom string. And on the end we're going to play all three of these at the same time. So what we're going to do is we're going to start by using our thumb by playing the fifth string and the fourth string. So it's going to be.
That's all the thumb is going to do. And at the very end what I showed you on that close up, we're going to use all three fingers, first, second and third and pluck up to strum those other three strings. So it's going to sound like this.
All right, so that's our A minor. So third, thumb, thumb, pluck. One more time. Thumb, thumb, pluck. And that's how we're gonna play the A minor. For this picking part, the C chord, we're gonna do something slightly different. We're gonna start the same. It's gonna be the thumb, thumb, thumb. We're gonna play the first and second fingers, we're gonna pluck. So it's gonna be thumb, thumb, pluck. And then we're gonna play the fourth string with our thumb again. So it'll sound like this. Thumb, thumb, pluck, thumb.
Those are all eighth notes, one and two and. All right, so so far we have a minor.
3, 4, 1 and 2 and.
Alright, so the last chord is the dsus and we're going to use our thumb on the fourth string.
Then our first finger on the third string. And then the second and third fingers are going to pluck the bottom two strings. All right, and then we're going to come back to the first finger on the third string. So that'll sound like this.
1 and 2 and 1 and 2. And so let me just go in for one more close up so that you guys can see that whole progression. So here's the A minor again. So it's thumb, thumb, all three fingers. Then the C is thumb, thumb first and second and then thumb back on the fourth string. And then the DSUS chord is going to be the thumb on the fourth string, the first finger on the third, plucking the bottom two back to the first finger. So it's.
That's how we're going to play every single verse in this song, and it really brings the dynamic level down. So you don't want to be playing this very loud. It has a very soft tone to it. It's kind of like a very depressing song.
So don't dig into it too much because on the verses, we really want to bring the dynamic down so that when we get to the next part, which is the choruses, we can really, really open this up. So let's talk about this first chorus. So the chord progression for the chorus, the chords are going to change a little bit. We have a G major chord. We have a minor seven. We have F add nine. It's kind of like an F add nine with an A in the bass. So what we're going to do to get to that from this A7, it's pretty easy. You leave your first finger in place. You're. Your second finger comes down, your third finger. It's almost like you're making an F major 7 chord. So your third finger's on the third fret, fourth string. And then the pinky is going to come down to the third fret on the bottom string. And we're actually going to hit. We're going to hit that A in the bass. That's why I said it's kind of like a slash. A chord gives it kind of a dark sound. So to go from a minor 7 to F add 9. All right. You'll hear it when you listen to the song. Now, remember, there's also a piano in this song. So that's some of the dynamics that you're going to hear and why this chorus becomes so big. We're going to try to mimic that as much as possible. After The F add 9, we have a C. And then it just keeps repeating that progression over and over again. So it's g a minor 7, f add 9 and then back to C. Okay. And then you go again. G, a minor 7, f add 9, c, so forth and so on. So what we're going to do, we're going to be switching over to completely straight eighth notes. But we want to try as best as possible to accent all the downbeats.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3.
Now when the piano comes in in the song, you can do that. You can do that right on a piano, a little harder on a guitar. But we're going to do the best we can. So we've been finger picking for this verse. So it means I don't. I don't have a pick in my hand, which I Could really dig into for the dynamics. So if you want to use a pick you can, but I'm going to stick with using my hand. So we're going to use our thumb for the downs. And these are basically going to be all down strums. So we're going to be accenting the 1, 2, 3 and 4 by just playing more of the chord. So if I'm on this G chord.
So on the 1, 2, 3, 4, I'm strumming a lot more of the chord. And on the ands I'm really just kind of getting the bass note, maybe one or two bass notes.
So that's something you can try out. Try not to get everything to sound just like a flat level. The sun came out so I had to adjust my lighting. Alright, so if I go through this chorus it's going to sound like this. Starting on G, 1 and 2 and.
3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4&C 2, 3. Again we got G 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.
The F.
And the C.
And you do that for the chorus. And then once we get to the very last G we get back to A minor and we're back to.
Right back into the finger picking part. Okay, so that's what's after that. And then at the very end of the song we have another verse, another chorus. This second chorus gets really, really emotional and the piano really helps with that. And the interlude at the very end. Sorry, it's the outro. I keep saying interlude. So the outro, we're going from a minor 7.
The same thing. F add 9. It's the same progression as the chorus except we have double G.
And then we have a minor 7.
F add 9. And the very last chord is a G and we just hold that and let it ring.
So the outro is 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2, 3 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 1 and 2 and 3 and a minor 7234 to the F. 2, 34.
And 1, 2, 3 and you let it fade. So that is Johnny Cash's Hurt. Amazing song. If you haven't watched the video, do go and watch that video. It's absolutely amazing. If you guys are interested in learning more songs, YouTube's gonna pop a couple more videos up over there. Make sure to give me a comment, give me a like and a subscribe if you haven't and I'll see you guys in the next lesson video.
