Rock Out To Billie Jean with THIS Acoustic Guitar Lesson - COOL Bassline Included!

Hey guitar enthusiasts. I'm going to be showing you a simplified way to play Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. But not only that, I'm going to be showing you how to play the cool intro bass line that even beginners can do. So let's get into the lesson.

So let's talk about the chords we're going to be using for this song. We're going to be using itty bitty tiny three note chord triads. What that means is we're just going to be playing, playing three notes, little abbreviated versions of chords. Let me show you what I mean. So the first chord in this song is an E minor and I want to make a note. You guys see this little orange thing? This is called a capo. This is my kaiser capo and I'm putting it at the second fret. So all of these chords are going to be played relative to the capo. Okay? So when I say the second fret, it's two frets up from the capo, not the actual second fret. All right, so we do have the capo on the second fret here. So if I'm going to play an E minor chord sound like this with the capo on. And when you play an E minor, usually play all six strings, right? Has a very dark, warm sound. But what we're gonna do, we don't even need to use our fingers at all. We're just gonna play the bottom three strings open. Hear that? Alright. And then I'm using my hand, my strumming hand here very quickly to deaden those strings. Okay. Not letting it ring out. For this song, we're gonna strum down and then when you put your hand, if you just gently touch the strings, it'll kill the sound.

Okay, so that's what we're doing for E minor. Just these bottom three strings, okay? That's your first chord. The second one is F sharp minor. Again, we're going to be using the bottom three strings the way I like to play it. I'll show you two options you can find. What's most comfortable for you is I like to bar it with the first finger because it's the bottom three strings. They're usually easy enough even for beginners to play. It's nice and easy to press all three strings at the same time. Plus when you go to mute the strings, all you is let go of the tension on the fretting hand and it meets the strings for you. That's why I like playing it that way. The other way is to play your first, second, and third fingers, much like how I would play an A major chord. But some people find that this is too. Especially if you have bigger fingers, it's too crowded in that second fret. So a lot of people like to do barring with the first fret. Okay, so that's the second chord, F sharp minor, our third chord. And another reason why I like the bar version is, is we're just going to slide our first finger up to the third fret, and it's going to play now the bottom two strings. And then our first finger is going to play the fourth fret on. Or. Sorry, yeah, fourth fret on the third string. This is like a G chord. So we have an E minor, then we have F sharp minor, then we have a G chord, and then we go back to that F sharp minor. All right, once again. So we have E minor, F sharp minor, G and then F sharp minor. Okay, so those are the chords we're going to be using for the verse. We're going to use different chords for the chorus. And when we get there, I'll show you. So first, I want to go over the timing for this verse section as well as the chorus. The pre chorus is actually where the chords change up a little bit. So the timing is going to be 1 and 2 and. Okay, so 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and four. And 1 and 2 and 3, and 4 and. So it's gonna sound like this. So listen, before you try playing with me, you can always back it up and try it again. Listen first. Okay? Because if I always tell people with rhythm, if you can sing it, you can play it. Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. Now bring it over the guitar.

Again.

Again.

Lost my pick, but I caught it. Look at that. I caught it in between my fingers. That happens. See, I've been playing guitar for over 20 years, and I still lose my pick sometimes. At least it didn't fall on the floor completely. But if that happens to you, hey, just pick the floor. Pick the pickup off the floor and keep going. All right. Just goes to show you, I still make mistakes, guys. So that is the essential rhythm for the verse, and those are the main three chords. But every once in a while, there's going to be an A minor chord that comes in, and it just looks like this. Okay? It's your open bottom string. First finger on the B string here, and the second finger on the G string. Okay, at the second fret. So we Have.

I mean if you played a full. If you know an A minor chord, you're just gonna strum the A minor bottom three strings, okay? That's all it is. So that covers our verses and our choruses for this song. Now we're gonna go into the pre chorus and I really like these. I think if you can play full chords, it sounds much better. If not, I will show you the little triad versions. But we've gotta see. People always told me E minor. Be careful what you do. Don't.

In Young Girls Hearts. E minor. And then we have a C. Mother always told me to E minor. Be careful what you do to see. Be careful what you do. Cuz the B7 lies become the truth. All right. And we're just holding those. So it's going to be.

Hey, Billie Jean is not my lover. And then it goes right into. Into the chorus. So you can hear the full chords sound great. We're just strumming them and holding them, letting them ring. If you can't do that, you can always play the one fingered C chord, okay. Or if you know my two fingered version, you can also play that too. So it's a C chord. Then you have the, you know, the E minor, just the open three strings. And then to play this B7 chord, which I think is the hardest chord in the song. What I would do. If you want an easy version, just use your first and second fingers and play the bottom three strings. First finger's gonna be on the third string. Second fret, third finger is. Our second finger is gonna be on the second fret of the first string. And it sounds like this. Okay. So it doesn't sound. I think the full chords sound much better. But if you're a beginner and you don't know that B7 chord yet, that works just fine. So you could do the C chord open. E minor chords open. That's fine. And then you get C. And then for the B7, just play the triad, okay? Just the three notes on the bottom. It's actually not really a B7 has some weird funky name that I don't even know what the program is telling me. But we're going to call it the easy B7, okay? Because we keep things simple here. All right? So once you hit that B7, you heard me. You go right back into that rhythm of.

Billie Jean is not my lover. She's just a girl who claims that I am the one. But the kid is not my son.

So you guys can now go over to the recording and play along With Michael if you want to. But if you're interested in learning that really, really cool bass line, then stick around because we're going to go through that right now. Now, essentially, to play this bass line, you just need one finger. Yes, just one finger. And it's this one right here, the index finger. And I'll show you the techniques that I use to play this. I. I usually play this pretty flat. So if you guys know when I teach a spider exercise, I always tell you play with the tip of your finger, right. Your fingertips on the string.

Right. We always want kind of like those fingertips perpendicular to the guitar. I'm going to break that rule here because I'm going to do like a little bit of a finger roll. This makes it easier for me to play. You can lift your finger and move your finger up and down. Let me play through it a couple times here so that you guys can see how my finger moves and then I'll explain what's happening.

So if you're watching my finger, you can see it was doing a little bit of this, but it wasn't really doing. It wasn't really moving much. Alright, so it's just one finger. And this is going to be an eighth note pattern. Okay. What are eighth notes? 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2, 3 and 4. And 1 and two and three and four. And so it's actually peppy. She might want to start slow. But let's go over what notes are playing for this song. So we're starting. All the notes are going to be played on the D string and the A string. Okay. D and A. And we're starting on the D string. Second fret. And I was playing two. Two. Okay. So I was playing the D string and then I was just rolling. If you can see it. I'm going to try and over exaggerate it on the close up. This is over exaggeration. I'm just slightly rolling.

Okay. So I'm catching the bottom string just above my knuckle of my index finger. And then I'm catching the top string a little bit more on the top side of my fingerprint. Okay. And I'm just rolling it. I'm going D A. Okay. And then I'm lifting the finger off because I got to go back to the D string and play an open note. So it's.

Okay. So those are the first three notes. Two, two, Open. And then we're going to play the second fret on the D string again. Open. So our first five notes are.

1 and 2 and 3. Okay, now we're going to jump back up to the A string, second fret, open string, second fret. So everything's open strings and second frets here. So we've got second fret on the D, second fret on the A. Open D, second fret D, open D, second fret A. Open a, second fret A. Okay.

Okay. And if you'll notice, I don't know if you guys notice this on my picking hand, what I'm doing, I'm using what's called alternate picking. I'm going down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up with my picking here, watch. Check it out again. I'll go slow so you guys can see it. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

By doing alternate picking, it can help you play this much faster than if you did it as all downs. It's really hard to do this as all downs.

I can go much faster.

I can do this much faster. That wasn't perfect, but I can do much faster if I use alternate picking techniques. So that's something I want you guys to be aware of. So if you guys really enjoyed this Billie Jean lesson, then you're really going to love learning the lick for Beat it over there. I'm going to show you how to play it step by step. I'll see you guys in that lesson.