Maggie May Guitar Lesson by Rod Stewart

Welcome to Maggie Mae. This is a great song that was done by Rod Stewart. And if you heard in that intro, we're gonna get a little percussive with our guitar on the strumming here. So the chords in this song aren't that difficult. I mean, we do have an F sharp minor that comes in, but overall, the chord progression really isn't too bad. If you need the chart for this, you can always. There should be a link in the description below of where you can go and get the chord chart for this song so that you can follow along. So the chords that we're using for this song are going to be A, G, D, E minor and F sharp minor. I think that's everything. Let me look through the whole chord. Yeah, that looks like them all, so not too bad. So the first part of the song, the first two lines start off with an A chord, a G chord, followed by 2D chords. So that's the first two lines. And then we've got this G, D, G, A. And then it switches off to a few other chords. So this song is repetitive once you get through the whole verse, but there's a bunch of different chords that make up the transition on this. So going and getting that chord chart is going to help you.

Really.

What I'm going to focus on with this song is the percussive strumming that I'm using with it. Because if you have the chord chart, it's really easy. All you have to do is play along with those chords as written. So we're going to start with this strumming pattern. And what I'm doing is I'm taking a fairly simple pattern, which is a syncopated eighth note pattern that you can use for a lot of songs. And the rhythm for this is 1, 2, and.

And 4, and.

Okay, so what is that? So it's going to be down, down, up. So that's the first half of the pattern.

Down, down, up.

And the second half of the pattern, which some people can find tricky, is that you're going to do another up. It's going to be up, down, up. So the second part is up, down, up. So if we put those two together, we're going to have down, down, up.

Up, down, up, down, down, down, up, up, down, up.

So it'll be 1, 2, and 3 and 4, and 1, 2, and 3 and four.

And.

So there's no down strum on that three, which is the downbeat. So most people are used to having a down strum there. There is no down strum, but we still count it like it's happening. You can pretend. Take the strum anyway. You can pretend it's happening, but just don't strum.

So it's down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up.

That's the basis of the pattern that we're going to use. So what we're going to do is we're going to get percussive with our hand on your strummin. So don't be afraid. Some people are usually scared to hit their guitar. You're not going to break it, but you can whack the strings. And sometimes I hit it so hard that I'll get the actual body of the guitar and we'll make it sound like a drum. It's almost like you're karate chopping your guitar. And what I'm doing is I'm accenting on the 2 and the 4. So it's.

So you hear that one top and, and chop and could be a little tricky if you've never done this before. If you can't just stick with that strumming pattern.

Down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up.

You can stick with that pattern. It's fine. It works for this song. But the percussive aspect will give it a little bit more character. So let's do that again. So the first half is down, chop up. That's the first half.

Down, chop up.

Down, chop up, down, chop up.

And the second half is up, chop up. Again, up, chop up.

So down, down, chop up, chop up, down, chop up, down, chop up.

So that is what we're doing for the rhythm pattern. So I'm going to play through a little bit of this song here just to give you a feel. Now sometimes you might hear me throw in a couple extra chops on these Ds. Sometimes I'm chopping on 1, 2, 3 and 4. Sometimes I'm chopping on all of the beats. But for now just focus on chopping on two and four until you get that down. But sometimes my muscle memory takes over and I do extra chops. So I'm going to start from the beginning right at wake up at the A. So we've got two, three, four.

Wake up. Maggie, I think that it's something to say to you.

It's late September and a baby should be back at school.

Maggie, I couldn't have tried anymore.

You love me with all.

Just the same.

Stole my heart. And that's what really does.

Now start in the second verse.

My eyes, your everything.

I laughed at all of the jokes.

So you'll notice I don't even use the chop for the entire song. You can gives it a really percussive sound. But sometimes you can. You can fade out of that chop as well if you want to open things up. So usually for the first two or three lines, I'll chop.

And then once you get to maybe.

Oh, Maggie, I couldn't have tried anymore.

Your love's.

Once you get to that part, you can kind of use a little bit more of an open strumming. And then when you get to the very last line, you stole my heart.

And then once you start back in, you can go back to the chop on this song. So that is Rod Stewart's Maggie Mae. There are a couple solo parts in here that you'll see on the chart. Most of these chords are a full measure. There's a couple parts like that very end of that line, you stole my heart. The E minor is a full measure. The G is a half measure, and the A is a half measure. So on that part, you would just do the first half of the strumming pattern. You would go E minor for first full pattern.

Down, down, up, up, down, up.

And then you would have G. Down.

Down, up, down, down, up. So you would do down, down, up.

On G and down, down, up on A. So the whole thing would be E minor.

Down, down, up, up, down, up.

And then G. Down, down, up, and then A.

Down, down, up.

So the whole thing would be down.

Down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up.

And that is the majority of the song. So you'll see that ga split in the chord chart as well. That does pop up in the solo a couple times. But for the most part, that is the entire song. So you can either do one of two things. You could either do. Well, you can do three things. If you're a beginner, you can just do four down strums, which is fine. Great way to start. You can do the down, down, up.

Up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up.

With no chopping and no percussion, or you can put some percussion on beats two and four.

So those are a few options for this song. So go download the chord chart so that you can follow along. Because there are a lot of chords to this song, but fortunately, they're relatively easy chords for you to play along with. I wanted to give you a close up on that chop just so that you can see what my right hand or what my strumming hand is doing. So I'm really hitting. I am hitting this guitar. I'm not tapping it. Where you're going to get this muffled sound you really want to. So we've got.

So you can hear those strings hitting again. So we got.

And there you go. That is the close up of this percussive hitting sound that you can do on your guitar while you're strumming.