STEP-BY-STEP American Pie Guitar Lesson for Beginners!

By by Miss American Pie Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry and good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye Singing this would be the day that I die this'll be the day that I die.

Hey.

Guitar enthusiasts, we're gonna be doing a fun classic here called American Pie. This is a great song because it uses a lot of different chords and we're gonna go through how to play it so step by step.

Now, the first thing I'm going to go over is the chords used in this song. The downside to the song is it does have a lot of different chords. So I'm going to share those with you first. And you can always go over to my website, laurenbateman.com to follow along with my lesson notes there. So the open chords we have, we have an E minor chord. There's an A minor chord. There's a D chord, There's a G chord, there's a C chord. There's also an A7 chord. There is a D7 chord. And I think, oh, nope, there's one more 7 chord. There is an A minor 7 chord in this song as well. So the good thing about this song is that there are no bar chords and we could play this at a beginner level. So let's get into how we're going to play each section. Now, the first part of the song is relatively easy if you are familiar with the song. You just need to play the chords over the words and the way they change. So it's not really a strumming pattern for this first verse section of the song. So let me just play through a little bit so you guys can get a feel for how this is going. You're going to hear the chords are going to change right over the lyrics.

So we've got A long, long time ago I can still remember how the music used to make me smile and I knew if I had my chance I could make those people dance and maybe they'd be happy for a while and February made me shiver Every paper I deliver Bad news on the doorstep I couldn't take one more step and I can't remember if I cried When I read about his widowed bride Something touched me deep inside the day the music died so you can hear each.

Strum came directly from over a lyric. So it's helpful to be very familiar with this song because if you know the lyrics and the way the vocal melody is moving, you're going to know when it's time to change the chord. So you might want to Pay attention to your lyric sheet because there's a lot of different chords, like I said, and there's a lot of different variations. There is no straightforward chord progression. That is the difficulty with this song. But that's how we play through the first section. Now, the first time we come to the chorus, we're going to use our first strumming pattern. And this is an easy strumming pattern that you can use throughout the song if you're not at that late beginner stage yet. But this will work throughout the song. So this pattern is going to be an eighth note pattern. It's going to be 1, 2, and 3, 4, and 1, 2, and 3, four. And down, down, up, down, down, up. It'll sound like this. And I'm going to just play one chord. I'm going to play a G chord just so you can see. But we're going to be splitting. We're going to do something different. But let me show you the pattern first. So it's going to be 1, 2, and 3, 4, and down, down, up.

So the chorus section has a lot of chords that split a measure, and that means each chord is going to be two beats, or each chord is going to be a down, down, up. Okay, so it'd be 1, 2, and 3, 4. And 1, 2, and 3, four.

1, 2, and 3, Four. And 1, 2, and three, four.

And. Okay, one. So you can see we're giving each chord half of the strumming pattern. All right? And if that's too fast for you, you can always just do two down strums to record.

You go down, down, down, down Chevy to the levee but the levee was.

Dry so if doing that up strum is too difficult for you, you can always just keep it as straight down strums. So what's this going to sound like over our chorus section? It's going to sound like this.

It'll be so by by Miss American pie Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry and good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye Saying this'll be the day that I die holding notes again this'll be the day that I D.

So we get to the end of this chorus, the strumming really picks up into a slightly different strumming pattern that I'm going to show you in a second. But just to reiterate on this chorus, the first half is all split measures. And then at the end, you saw again, I just did single strums on the chords.

This'll be the day that I die.

This'll be the day that I.

And then when I get to this die over the D chord.

I'm so switching strumming patterns. The song really comes alive at this point, and I think this strumming pattern that I'm going to show you really helps this song come to life. Now, for this second verse, it doesn't do the same thing it did in the first verse. It's a whole nother slew of different chords. So we're going to be using this strumming pattern, which is going to be another eighth note pattern. This one's syncopated. It means we're missing a down strum on one of the downbeats. We're not going to be strumming down on three. It's going to be down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up. Okay, one, two, and. And four. And.

Now, if that's a little difficult for you, you can always use that first strumming pattern. It will still work. Or you could keep the downbeat on the three. Your strumming pattern would just be 1, 2, and 3 and 4. And 1, 2, and 3 and four, and. But for the rest of this lesson, I am going to demonstrate using that syncopated rhythm. So let's see how we're going to apply this to the next verse. So in this verse, all the chords are one measure. So we're going to do a full strumming pattern for each one of these chords. And it'll sound like this. So we take it from the die from that chorus.

This will be, this will be the day that I die.

We got. Did you write the book of love? And do you have faith in God above? If the Bible tells you so.

Now do you believe in rock and roll? Can music save your mortal soul? Can you teach me how to dance with soul?

So you can see we're mostly doing full measure strumming. There was one section where we split a measure. We had that G and D. Do you believe in. And I just went back to.

Now, do you believe in rock and roll?

So you can see I just went right back to down, down, up, down.

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

Now, that might be tricky for some of you. You might have to practice going from the D chord and going down, down.

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

All right, so that might be tricky for you guys to play through. So take your practice, pause the video if you have to, and practice through that. A bunch of Times so your hand gets comfortable. Because then we're going right back into single strums. So you can see this song has a lot of dynamics to it. All right, so we got single strums again. We've got.

Well, I know that you're in love with him? Cause I saw you dancing in the gym? You both kicked off your shoes Man, I did those rhythm and blues I was a lonely teenage bronking buck With a pink carnation and a pickup truck I knew that I was out of luck the day the music died.

I started singing Singing chorus Bye bye miss American pie Roll my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry and good old boys are drinking whiskey and R singing this will be the day that I die this will be the day that I die.

Now this song goes on and on. It was one of those songs that I. I love doing it with students because of all of the different chords, but it's tended to get boring after a while for me because it's like an eight minute song, but it has a lot of different chords for you guys to practice. It has a couple different strumming patterns. So what I would do is just work through. Okay, play through that first verse, then go into the chorus. Play the second verse. Okay. And go into the next chorus. And you've basically covered the entire or all the different parts of the song. I'm not going to play all eight minutes here, but I am going to go through from the first verse into a chorus, second verse into a course so that you guys can play along with me for at least a good portion of the song to understand how this all comes together and how it works. And if you guys need to slow this down, you can always use the settings cog down there. You'll see my friends from Australia over here hanging out on the radio. Rob from Perth gave me those at the live event, so I told them I put those in a video. So. Hey, Rob, how's it going? Hope you're seeing this video here. So let's take this song from the top. We've got 1, 2, 1, 2.

Ready, and. A long, long time ago I can still remember how the music used to make me smile and I knew if I had my chance I could make those people dance and maybe they'd be happy for a while.

But February made me shiver Every paper I deliver Bad news on the doorstep I couldn't take one more step and I can't remember if I cried or when I read about his little bride Something touched me deep Inside. The day the music died Here comes the strumming so by by Ms. American Pie drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry and good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye Singing this and by this will be the day that I die.

This will be the day that I die.

Well you write the book of love and do you have faith in God above? If the Bible tells you so?

Now that you believe in rock and rolling music Saviour, mortal savior.

Can you teach me how to dance bristle?

Well I know that you're in love with him. Cause I saw you dancing in the gym. You both kicked off your shoes. Man I did those rhythm and blues. I was a lonely teenage punking buck. With a pink carnation and a pickup truck. But I knew that I, I was saddled up. The day the music died I started singing by by Miss American Pie Throw my Chevy to the levee. But the levee was dry and good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye Singing this will be the day that I die. This will be the day that I die.

So I don't know if you guys noticed on that playthrough, there were a couple times I made mistakes. I'm reading along with my sheet. Sometimes I'm playing the wrong chord and you can see me. There was. I had to go to a D7 chord and I was accidentally going to a D chord and I changed very quickly back to the D7 chord. And that's a very important lesson for you guys to learn. And sometimes why I leave the mistakes in is to show you that you know when you're playing a song, if you make a mistake, just keep playing. Keep going through that song. Because you learn the most by working through the mistakes. Now, if you guys are looking to learn another great song that has a very similar feel to this Don McLean song and maybe a few less chords, you guys can go check out my Brown Eyed Girl lesson right over there where I'll show you how to strum along to that step by step.