Silver Springs Guitar Lesson for BEGINNERS!

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. We're going to be going over Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac. I'm going to be keeping it simple for you guys. So even if you're at the beginner level, you could probably play along to this song.

So we're going to be breaking this lesson into four distinct parts. We have our intro. We're going to have our verses and our choruses. And then we're going to have the really cool bridge section, which I think is my favorite part of. Of the entire song. So let's take a look at the intro first. This is what it's going to sound like.

So if you notice, I'm only playing notes on the bottom three strings. These are going to be what we call chord triads. And that's what we're going to play for this intro. We're not going to play the full chords because it'd be pretty tricky if you were a beginner having to switch into an F chord and all this other stuff. So we're just going to leave it at the chord triads. Now the thing with Fleetwood Mac is There's always like 50 different guitar parts. So we're kind of picking and choosing here which ones we're doing. So let's start off with the first chord shape. It's kind of like an inverted bar chord. All right, so I'm going to use my third and fourth fingers on the 10th fret of the B and G strings. And I'm going to put my first finger on the A fret. And you guys are going to be very happy with me. I remembered to actually use my Taylor guitar for this so that you guys can see the dots on the fret board. Alright, I know you guys yell at me all the time. I did remember to do it this time. Alright, so we have 8, 10, 10. Okay. And that's our first chord shape. Okay. Then what we're doing, leave the first finger down. We're just going to slide back. And we're going to put our second and third fingers at an angle. So we're at the seventh fret. And then the second finger is going to be on the second string at the eighth fret. And then the third finger is going to be on the ninth fret. Okay. So we just slid back one fret.

Okay. And if you notice, I can actually leave the third finger in place too.

Very nice. Okay, now the great thing about this next chord transition, you have to do nothing with your fingers. You just have to slide them back two frets. Okay? Okay. So we have the first chord shape at 8 and 10. Then we have 7, 8 and 9.

Then we have V6, 7. And then we're going back to that first chord shape, except it's 3, 5 and 5. Okay. So we got first chord shape, second chord shape, second chord shape, first chord shape. Okay. And use your first finger as the lead finger. So I would be focusing on 8, 7, 5, 3. And then I would get my other fingers into place.

Okay, so those are the first four notes. The next one starts, you're already in place. It's just you're playing the same chord shape again.

Now we got a little mini bar. Okay. I don't typically like bar chords for beginners, but it's on the B and E string and it's just two fingers, so hopefully you'll be able to accomplish this. We're going to take this first finger on the third fret and you're going to play both of those strings together. And then your second finger is just going to reach up and grab the fourth fret on that G string. Okay. So we went from this chord shape here where we just were.

And then bar and then the third shape, it's this same shape. We're just moving it down to the first fret and the second fret. And then the last chord shape is just the first finger on the B string. Okay. So that whole section is going to be.

One more time back to that first shape.

So let's take the whole thing together now. So we've got one, two, ready and.

Now there is a very specific timing to that intro, but my recommendation would be to go and listen to the record and sit it out.

All right. This way you don't have to worry about counting so much. If you can sing something and hear the rhythm, you can play it. Because the timing is a little bit tricky. So if you sing it out with the notes, it just makes it a lot easier. At least I think so.

If you keep doing that over and over again, you'll get the timing. But it's a very, very cool intro and it's worth getting to know. Alright, so we're gonna move into the verse and chorus section of this song now before everyone yells at me that Lauren, this doesn't sound exactly like the song. We're keeping it simple here, okay? We're doing this more at the beginner level, so we're gonna keep it easy. We're gonna use two chords, okay? There's a lot more going on, but we're just gonna be using two chords. There's a lot of picking, but we're gonna strum it. Okay. So the two chords we're going to be using are C, and instead of using an F bar chord, we're going to use F major 7. And there's two options, depending on how well you can move your fingers. So the easier option we have C is to keep first finger in place and just move the other two fingers down one string. Okay, so we have C major, F major 7. C major, F major 7. Now, on this F major 7, you would try to just the four strings, so it'll have a little tinnier sound than the second option. So the second option is we play a C major chord, we lower our second finger, and then we put our pinky right below our third finger. A little bit of a warmer sound. And I prefer this if you can't play that, you're a beginner, so you probably can't play full barre chords. I consider barre chords more of an intermediate skill. But this F major 7 is going to allow us to. To play through the song. So once you've done your intro, we get into the actual lyrics and the strumming pattern we're going to use very, very simple. We're just going to go 1, 2, and 3, 4. And. Okay, that's going to be played as down, down, up, down, down, up. Okay, down, down, up, down, down, up, one.

Now, in this verse, we're going to be playing a C for a full measure. Very quickly, just for two beats, we're going to switch to that F major 7 chord, which was just horribly played by me. Let me just do that again. We're going to play an F major 7 chord, and then we're going to go back to the C chord. So the F major 7, we're going to just go down, down, up, and then back to the C chord. Down, down, up. Okay, so if we played through. Through just the first two measures, it would sound like this. One, two, and three, four. And one, two, and three, Four. And one more time. Ready? 1, 2. Here we go. 1, 2, and 3, 4. And one, two, and 3, 4. And. All right, so what would this sound like over the lyrics? Let's take a look at this first verse. Now, I have notes on my website, so if you need to follow along with the strumming patterns and see the little tablature for the intro, head over to the website. You can follow along over there. So starting from the C chords, we got one, two, ready?

And you could be my silver spring.

Blue green colors flashing I would be.

All right. So you can hear it's not sounding. You know, there's a lot of, like.

There'S a lot of picking that occurs in this intro. And there are multiple guitar parts again, but we're just going to keep it simple. Strum along, find a good strumming pattern that you can keep it simple and sing along to. And I think that's exactly what we accomplished there. Now this chorus section is going to be really, really easy for you guys. We're just going to stay on that F major 7 chord. Okay. There's a lot of other guitar parts that are happening, but for us, we're just going to do that same strumming pattern. One, two, three. And you're just going to stay on that F major 7 chord and say she's pretty.

And do you say that? Love you.

Baby I don't wanna know.

And then we go right back after. No, we go back to.

All right, so see, that's the key of learning that intro because it kind of comes back in at the end of these courses. So you can see we kept the verses and the courses very, very simple. All right, so let's give it a try. From the beginning. We're doing intro, a verse and a chorus. And then we're gonna jump into the bridge section, which is my favorite part of the song. One, two, here we go.

You could be my silver spring.

Blue.

Green colors flashing I would be your only dream Shining over ocean crown as.

She.

And they say she was pretty.

And do you say that she loved you.

Baby, I don't want to know.

Now this bridge section is the best part of the song. It really is because we start bringing in some different chords, some different chord movements here. And I remember my. My wife was listening to, you know, her Google radio and this song came on. I was like, oh my God, I forgot how awesome this song is that I was like, I have to do a lesson on it. So this bridge, we're introducing a few extra chords. So we have an A minor chord and a G chord on top of our C chords and our F major 7. Alright. Ideally, if you could play the F bar chord, that's always going to sound the best. But again, this F major 7 is going to work well enough to get you through the song. We're not changing anything on the strumming pattern. It's just all of these chords or most of them split a measure. So it's going to be A minor and G splitting a measure. So A minor, you're going to do down, down, up, and then G. We.

Have down, down, up.

And then we have a C chord.

Down, down, up.

An F chord.

Down, down, up.

And then we have two measures of G. So the G chord we're going to hang out on for a while. Okay. If you wanted to change up the strumming pattern a little on that G chord because we're hanging on it so long, you could just do 1, 2, 3, 4.

And 1, 2, 3, 4.

And so we put this all together on this bridge. What's it going to sound like? One, two, Ready? And time.

Cast a spell on you that you won't forget me.

I know I could have loved you but you would not let me.

Well, I'll follow you down to the sound of my bus that haunts.

I hope you guys enjoyed this Fleetwood Mac lesson. If you're looking for more beginner style songs taught by me step by step, go check out my beginner song playlist where there's going to be loads of great songs for you at the beginner level.