Lay Down Sally Guitar Lesson for BEGINNERS!

Hey, guitar enthusiast. Lauren Bateman here, and I'm going to show you how to play a simplified version of Eric Clapton's Lay Down Sally. Not only that, I'm going to show you how to play a cool little bass line for the intro. Let's get into it.

So first things first, let's talk about the chords we're going to use. There's only three, which is great. We've got the A major chord, a D major chord, and an E major chord. Now, if you're one of those people who has trouble with the A chord, remember, there's multiple ways that you can play an A chord. We'll pop some options up here. Find whichever one is most comfortable. For most people, it's usually that first finger on the top, that fourth string, that you end up muting. Just try and give it a little extra pressure. So this song has a lot of guitar parts, some layering. So we're gonna do a little bit of a strumming pattern. That's why this is a simplified version. It's not gonna sound exactly like the song, but it's gonna help you play along in time. Let me demonstrate quickly what we're gonna.

Is wrong and wanting you to stay here with me.

I know you have somewhere to go but won't you make yourself at home? And won't you stay with me?

All right, so you kind of get the idea. And we're going to go through the verse and the chorus separately here, and we'll do a play along at the end as well so that you can practice. So let's talk about the strumming pattern first. What am I doing here? So this is going to be an eighth note strumming pattern. I'm going to show you a simplified way to do it first. And then we're going to add a little bit extra dynamic to it to make it sound cool. So the basis of this strumming pattern is 1, 2, 3, and 4. And played down, down, down, up, down, up. So let's take an E chord. Okay. Most people can play that pretty nicely. And let's just practice that strumming pattern. So it's going to be down, down, down, up, down, up, one.

Okay, let's try. Pick up the speed just a little bit because this is a fast song. Ready?

That's going to be the basis for the strumming pattern. And what we're going to do, if you're feeling up to a little bit of a challenge, you can accent the bass note, which was kind of what I was Doing in the demonstration, I think it comes off really well, especially on the chorus. And so what we're going to do is for each of these chords, we're just going to try and focus on the bottom one or two bass notes of each chord. So for this E chord, I'm going to try and hit just the top one or two strings. Okay. And then for the A chord, I'm going to try and hit just the top one or two bass notes on that A chord and then the D chord. Since it's only four, you know, four note chord. It would be advised that if you can just get that bass note on the D, that will make it sound the best. So let's try that. Now let's go back to that E chord. Okay. And we're just going to try going bass note on one and then a down strum on two. So the only thing that's changing is that first down strum. Instead of strumming the entire chord, we're just going to hit the top part of the chord instead. So it'll sound like this. One, two. Ready? One, two, and here.

So it's 1, 2, 3, and 4, and bass 2, 3, and 4.

So now if we go and apply this strumming pattern over the verse, this is what it's going to sound like. And this song has a really great structure. It's very, very repetitive. So the verse is we got 4A chords followed by 2D chords, 4A chords, 2D chords, and then 2E chords. If you want to follow along with my notes on my website, you can go over to laurenbatement.com and pull those up over there. So let's take this a little bit slower to start, all right. In the playthrough at the end, we'll do a little bit more of a full speed here. So let's go 1, 2. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, here we go.

There is nothing that is wrong in wanting you to stay here with me.

I know you got somewhere to go but won't you make yourself at home and won't you stay with me?

Don't you ever leave?

Very good. Now we're going to jump into the chorus section of the song. We're using the same three chords now. The only thing that changes on the chorus is the chord structure. That's all. We're going to keep doing that same strumming pattern. It's going to be double A, double D, then we have double E, then we have double A again. And then it just repeats that again. So Two A's, two D's, two E's, two A's. Alright, so very, very simple chord structure here. We're just going to take that same strumming pattern and, and we're gonna apply it to the chorus. So let's see what that's gonna sound like and then we'll put it all together. So we got 1, 2, 1, 2. Ready and.

Lay down Sally Rest here in my arms don't you think you want someone to talk to?

Lay down, Sally no need to leave too soon I've been trying all night long just to talk to you.

So before I jump in and show you that cool bass line to play over the intro, I'm going to do one playthrough of a verse and chorus. I'm going to do it at a slightly faster speed because this song is peppy and if you ever need to slow me down to practice with me, you can use the settings cog below to slow me right back down. So I'm going to take this from the second verse. All right? Ready? So 1, 2, 1, 2. Ready?

And the sun ain't nearly on the rise we still got the moon, the stars above.

Underneath the velvet skies Love is all that matters Won't you stay with me don't you ever leave Here we go Chorus. Lay down Sally Rest there in my arms don't you think you want someone to talk to?

Lay down Sally no need to leave real soon I've been trying all night long just to talk to you.

So I'm going to show you a simplified little bass line that you guys can play over the intro. Now, again, this song is super, super fast. So you might have to sit with this a while to get it up to full speed. Or again, if you play along with the song, just use the settings cog. So slow it down. So we're mostly going to be in the first three frets. So we're starting off. Open A string. Coming up. Second fret on the E string. Then we got Open E string, second fret on the E string. Open E string, Open A string. Okay, and again the timing is going to be 1, 2, 3 and 4. And 1, 2, 3 and 4. And just like our strumming pattern. Alright, so it's going to be 1, 2, 3 and 4.

And again 1, 2, 3 and 4.

And one more time without me. Ready and.

Okay, so that's the first measure. The second measure, we're going to hit that open B string. Again we're going to do the second fret on the D string. Okay? And then we're going to come up to the third fret on the top string, and we're going to go three, two, three. The timing on that is one and two, three, four. So it's going to sound like this.

One and two, three, four. 1 and 2, 3, 4.

Without me.

All right, so we put those together slowly. This is what it's going to sound like. 1, 2, 3, and 4.

M1 and 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, M4 M1 and 2, 3, four.

All right, so if we pick up the speed just a little bit on this, all right, we got 1, 2, 1, 2. Ready? And.

So that's it. Just a little bit faster. And you're probably saying, lauren, that's very fast. I think the song might even be just a little bit faster than that. So you can see this is just a fun little finger exercise for you guys to practice along with and have some fun. Now, if you guys love Eric Clapton, then I highly recommend you go check out my wonderful Tonight video right over there. Another great, simple song by Eric.