Lauren Bateman teaches Stand By Me in the key of A with four beginner chords: A, D, E, and F# minor. The song repeats an eight-measure progression with four down-strums per chord, and she shows an easier fingering for F# minor using just the three bottom strings.
So this is a song by Benny King called Stand By Me. And we're gonna do this song in the key of A, which means the chords we're gonna need are A, D, E and F sharp minor. Now if you don't know bar chords, this is supposed to be a simple song and bar chords sometimes are not that simple. So if you don't know the F sharp minor bar chord, hey, that's not a problem. If you know an A major chord, I can give you a simple solution to that so that you can play this song from the beginning to the end. Because that' with these simple songs playing from the beginning to the end, all the way through. So if you know an A major chord, that's the one where all the fingers sit on the second fret.
All you have to do is move all three of those fingers to the bottom three strings. So you're going to have a finger on the third, second and first strings at the first fret. And I just want you to play the bottom three str.
Not as nice as the full barre chord, but it's gonna work for now to get you through the song. So that's an easy fix for an F sharp minor chord if you don't know what it is or you can't play bar chords yet. So take an A major chord, which is this chord right here, and move everything down to the first, sorry, third, second and first strings at the second fret and you've got an F sharp minor chord. So this song is fairly repetitive. It has an eight measure chord progression. So what's that mean? Well, that means we're going to play eight measures of music. Some of those chords we're going to play twice, some of them are going to play once. So the first two measures of this song are A major.
The next two measures of this chord are F sharp minor. It's pretty easy. So two measures of A, two measures of F sharp minor, followed by a measure of D, that's D as in dog E and then two more measures of A. So we're going to be playing a lot of A's in this song. So if I go through the whole thing. So if you want to write that down, the intro, the verse, the chorus, all of them are 2A's, 2F sharp minors, 1D chord, 1E chord, and 2A's at the end. So I'm gonna play this for you. We're gonna do four strums per chord. Keep it simple. It's gonna sound like this. So we've got a 2, 3, 4.
A 2, 3, 4.
F sharp minor 2, 3, 4.
F Sharp minor 2, 3, 4 and D, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4. And a, 2, 3, 4 and a 2. Then repeat a 2, 3, 4, a 2, 3, 4. Fsharp minor 2, 3, 4, F sharp minor 2, 3,4. And D, 2, 3, 4. And E, 2, 3, 4 and A, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
&. That's it. That's the entire song. The entire song from beginning to end is made up of 8 measures of music that just keep repeating over and over again. So it's gonna sound like this. If we. If I start with the verse, I'm gonna skip the intro. I'll start with the verse here. So I'm gonna do a verse and chorus for you. Just four strums per chord. We're gonna start with that double A at the beginning, at the first measure. So here it.
Is. 2, 3.
4. When the.
Night.
Four. And the land is dark. Two, three, four. And the moon is the only light we see. Two, three, four. One.
Two. Back to the.
Beginning. And won't you be afraid. No, I won't you freely afraid 3, 4. As long as you stay them. Stand by me.
So D.
Stand.
By me, oh.
By me O D.
To the east and by a.
1, 2, 3.
4. And then it just keeps repeating that over and over again until you get to the end. At the end of the song, you're gonna want to end on an A. The song is in the key of A. So there you go. That's Stand By Me by Benny King, another one of my simple songs that I like to teach guitar students. And the reason is, again, it's very repetitive. It's something that's easy to memorize so you don't have to keep your eyes on the paper. Unless, of course, you want to sing and you don't know the lyrics. But for the most part, you can watch your guitar and what you're doing and make improvements to your playing that.
Way.
So. So there you go, Benny King. Stand By Me. Practice hard, and I hope that you pick it up quickly. And just in case you want a little bit more of an intricate strumming pattern for this, you can use.
Let'S see, we could do like a 16th note rhythm.
Pattern. One, two and a three, four and a one, two and a three, 4 and a. Down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down.
Down.
Just add a few extra up strums. Or you can also do the. The very fun. Down, up, up, down, up.
Can't even say that with the string name. So it's very much down, down.
Up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down.
Up. Very common strumming pattern. So the rhythm is 1, 2 and, and 4. And if that sounds like French to you, don't worry about it. But that is another strumming pattern you can.
Use. Down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down.
Up. So there you go. There's a couple extra little strumming patterns if you want to spice things up and make it a little bit more complicated.
