In this comprehensive guitar lesson, Lauren Bateman guides viewers through playing the Indigo Girls' song "Galileo". She begins by recommending a capo on the 1st fret to keep the song in an open, ethereal voicing and to avoid bar chords where possible. She outlines the core chord progression—E major, Bsus2 (or B5 with open strings), A major (or Asus), and B7—offering alternative sus‑2 versions for easier fingerings. She then introduces the C♯ minor bar chord, suggesting a movable B‑shape substitution for those less comfortable with full bars, and explains the brief F♯ major chord in the chorus, recommending a power‑chord alternative or a silent count‑in. The lesson details a specific down‑up strumming pattern, breaking it down into rhythmic counts (1‑and‑2‑and‑3‑and‑4) and providing a spoken‑out version for learners. For the bridge, Lauren demonstrates a palm‑muted eighth‑note pattern, describing hand placement near the bridge and the tonal effect of muting the lower strings. She also offers a secondary strumming variation for the C♯ minor section to add dynamic contrast. Throughout, she encourages learners to use the video’s speed‑control feature, practice slowly, and adapt the patterns as they become comfortable. The transcript also contains spontaneous lyrical improvisations by other participants, which serve as informal filler rather than instructional content.
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Hey guitar enthusiasts, I have an amazing song by the Indigo Girls here today. This is Galileo, and we're gonna need a capo on the 1st fret because this is gonna allow me to make the song as easy as possible and eliminate as many bar chords as possible. I also like this version because it has a nice open ethereal sound to it, and I'm gonna show you those chords right now. We're gonna start off with an E major chord. Okay, so the song is definitely not for absolute beginners, but if you know some of your chords, You can probably get through with playing this one. So we have E major. We have Bsus2, which is basically making a B5 power chord, but playing the bottom 2 strings open. It has this nice open sound. And you can slide from E major into Bsus2 by just sliding your 3rd finger up to the 4th fret relative to the capo, creating that chord and just strumming. Now we have an A major chord here. If you like that openness of the suspended chords, you could just slide your 3, fingers 3 and 4 and play an Asus here. Okay, totally fine too. Beautiful sound. I can play an A major, but just letting you know that's an option if you want to make it easier for yourself. And then we're gonna end on a B7. Yeah, could you slide back and play Bsus? You could, but this is what I'm gonna be playing.
So it's gonna be E, Esus2, A, B7.
But you could easily play E, B sus 2, A sus, and back to B sus. You could easily do that too. It makes it easier for you. So we'll talk about the strumming in a second. All right, I'm just going over the chords. The other one we have is a C sharp minor. You should play this as a bar chord if you can. If you can't, just take that B sus chord, move it up to see the C sharp position, which is going to be the 4th 6th and 6th frets relative to the capo. And just leave those B and E strings open. It's gonna sound fine for our purposes. But if you can play the C sharp minor, great. But again, not required. The only other place where we have a bar chord is the chorus when they go to Galileo, king of night vision. For one measure, they play an F sharp. They play an F sharp major chord. Okay, so you can either get rid of that by just playing a power chord, F sharp 5 power chord, okay? Or if you can't, when we do the playthrough, just count to 4, don't strum for that part, and jump back in when you can. So let's talk about the strumming pattern. I'm gonna try to stick to this as much as possible, but know once I do the playthrough and I start singing, my strumming takes on a mind of its own. And I may not stick with this, but if you listen to the recording, I kind of hear this coming through. So what is that?
I'm playing a down, up, up, down, up, down, up, up, down, up, down, up, up, down, up.
So what am I doing? The timing— if I tell you what the timing is, it is 1, uh, E and a two, a e and a. Okay, I wouldn't count that in my head. I wouldn't go one, a e and a two three, a e and a. That's gonna confuse me too much.
I would just go down up up down up down up up down up down up up down up down up up down up.
Let's try that a little bit. So we got one, two, three, four.
Down up up down up down up up down up down up up down up down up up down up down up up down up down up. Up, down, up.
Alright, let's try that over the chords. 1, 2, 3, 4.
Hey, so there you go. That's the strum we're gonna use for most of the intro, most of the verse, um, pretty much most of the song if you can. All right, your hand might switch to something else, and that's totally fine. The only place we're really going to switch this up a bit is when we get to our bridge section. We're going to do palm muting, which is a really, really cool sound. It's going to be all eighth notes down: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, except it's going to have this, this really chunky sound to it. And we get that chunkiness by muting the lower strings of our guitar With the palm, this fleshy side of our palm, and we do it by just putting it just in front of the bridge. I usually tell people, go into the sound hole; you're gonna hear it sounds very tinny, and then work your way back to where the guitar opens up. Okay, so that's at this bridge part. So the bridge is gonna sound like this.
I'm not making a joke. I know me and take everything so seriously. If we wait till the Time till our souls get it right, then at least I'll know that we know.
So then we open it back up again. But you can see it has this chunky sound to it, and most of it is going from C sharp minor, and it's great. You, you don't need a bar chord for this, you can just play the power chord because we're just muting the top few strings. Okay, so that's your C sharp minor. If, if you don't want to slide down to A here, you can just Take this C sharp minor, C sharp minor right here. Sorry. And then you can slide it up to the fifth, seventh, and seventh frets, and up to the top string. That's also A. I'll probably for me it's easy enough to slide between the A major and and the C. C sharp minor, so I'll probably do it that way. So that is the only place where we are going to change the strumming. Okay, but before we get into playing, let me just make one more note on strumming because other people ask me this. Usually on the C sharp minor, I— the feel of the song changes a little bit. So what you could do in that part, just to give you something else to spice up the song with, you could just do a down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up. So you could do Instead of doing. So let me show you with the first verse so that you can hear, because sometimes don't worry about playing right now. Sometimes it's better to hear things, and then we'll go back and explain it again. So let me just take it from the first verse.
Galileo's hell is on the block. Crime is looking up the truth. And as the bombshells of my daily is explode, I try to chase them to my youth. Had to bring up reincarnation.
So it's kind of this like walk down because we're going C sharp.
Chase them to my youth. All right, so I kind of like that down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down.
And then if you can jump back into the other strumming, I find that really works well on that C sharp walk down section. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna try and play this baby through. Okay? And if you need to use the settings cog to slow me down, please do. So one, two, here we go.
Galileo's hands.
I'm just looking up the truth. As the bombshells of my daily fears explode, try to chase them to my ears. Got to bring it up, reincarnation. Through a couple of beers the other night.
Now I'm 17 years old.
Time for mistakes made by another in another lifetime. Not till my soul gets it right. Can any human being ever reach that kind of light? Call on the whiskey and soda, can't lay off giving that vision, feeling Then I think about a motion which I never could explain. Some other fool crossed the ocean years ago. He must have crashed his little airplane. Till my soul gets it right. Many human beings never reach that God light. Call on the rest in soul. God lay a key in my vision, gave me insight. I'm not making a joke. I don't mean to take everything so seriously. If we wait for the time till If I can't get it right, then at least I know there'll be no nuclear annihilation in my lifetime. Still, I'll ride.
Hey! All the thanks to those before me.
That's all I've got to say. There's many squandered bucks. Once in a lifetime, but now I have to pay. Then again, it feels like some sort of inspiration to live the next life off the hook. Just say, look what I had to overcome from my left to my right. I think I'm out of luck. How long till my soul gets a ride? If any human being ever reached back out alive, call on the resting soul, the cowboy or king in my vision, the king of inside. How long till my soul gets it right? How long till we meet behind a slide?
How long?
Oh.
I hope you guys enjoyed this lesson. It's something you're definitely going to want to sit with and practice and watch this video over and over again. Run through the playthrough, slow me down. And if you are someone that loves classics like this, Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge, any other like '90s singer-songwriter stuff, go check out my playlist right over there where I have lots of songs by artists similar to the Indigo Girls.
