Lauren Bateman teaches beginners to play Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild using five open chords and simple strumming patterns. Learn the verse, chorus, and bridge with quarter notes, eighth notes, and a down-down-up strum, then add dynamics to make it sound full.
Born to be.
Wow.
Steppenwolf has put together a really great beginner guitar song for us that uses five simple open chords. And those chords are going to be the E minor chord, the E major chord, the G major chord, the D chord, and the A chord. Now, for the E minor chord, whether you play it with the first two fingers or the second and third finger for this song, it really doesn't matter. Now let's go and get into the strumming.
I'm going to show you a couple different strumming patterns that you can use throughout this song. And there are different sections. So we're going to be doing different things, but we're going to go through it step by step. And music purists, please don't yell at me and say I'm not playing it exactly the way the song is. We're just trying to have fun here because that's what we do on this channel. Now, the first strumming pattern I'm going to show you is just a simple quarter note pattern. And let's talk about our verse, since that's the easiest section of the song. It's really just one chord. It's the E minor chord. Okay. And again, like I said, if you play with the first or second or the second and third, really doesn't matter. Whatever is more comfortable for you. And all we're going to be doing is. I think it's eight measures. Yep. I just checked my chart over here and it's going to be eight measures, meaning we're going to have to count to four eight times to play through this verse. And the easiest way to do that is to just do four down strums per chord. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. 1, 2, 3, Four. 1, 2, 3,4. That's all you would do for this verse section. So what's that gonna sound like? It'll sound like this. I like smoking lightning.
Heavy metal thunder.
Wrestling with the wind.
And feeling that I'm under.
So as you very, very simple. And if you're looking for a little bit more of a late beginner strumming pattern, what I would recommend to make this sound a little bit more like the song is to play it as eighth notes all down strums. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Now, because we're moving to eighth notes, it's going to feel like the song is picking up speed. Even though we're not changing the tempo because we're strumming more, it's going to feel faster. It'll sound like this. Ready? I like smoking lightning.
Heavy metal Thund.
Now, before I go into the changes that are going to take place on the bridge and chorus section, I want to make a special note about the strumming pattern, because I get asked this question all the time. Lauren, how many strings were you strumming? I wasn't strumming the whole chord. I was just strumming maybe the top three strings.
So it has a very dark sound versus me strumming the whole E minor chord.
To get, like, those bright tones that come through from those bottom strings. The other benefit to doing this is because eighth notes, you have to play them so much faster. You can play faster when you only hit two or three strings. So that's another reason why. But you'll get a very dark sound by just catching the top two or three strings on that E minor chord. So let's talk about the two options we have here for our bridge. The chords are going to change here. All right, so we have a little bit more movement in the chord progression. Now, chord progression is just the order in which you play chords. So we have the G chord and the A chord splitting a measure. That means each chord is going to be two beats or two counts. And then it's followed by an E major chord. Okay. And we do that four times. So it's G, A, E, G, A, E, G, A, E, G, A, E. Now, and the simplest way to do that would be doing two down strums on the G, doing two down strums on the A, and then four down strums on the E.
Okay, so it would sound like this.
Yeah, darling, gonna make it happen Take the world in a love embrace.
Fire all your guns at once and explode.
Into space.
Now you can spice this up. I probably wouldn't do eighth notes here because I feel like the chorus opens up a little bit more. So I'm going to give you a different strumming pattern. If you're a little bit more of a late beginner and you can do up strums, I would go down, down.
Up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up.
All right, so each chord, G, we're doing down, down, up, 1, 2, and A. We're doing down, down, up, 3, 4, and. And then the E chord, we just do it twice. 1, 2, and 3, 4. And so that's going to look like this.
So, yeah, darling, gonna make it happen.
So we have another chord progression change in this chorus. So you're gonna have two E's Two measures of E, two measures of G. A full measure of A, a full measure of G. And then on the very end, we're going to strum the E chord and we're just going to let it ring for eight counts. Okay? Two measures. You can use the same strumming pattern I just showed you. 1, 2 and 3, 4. And 1, 2 and 3, 4. 1, 2 and 3.
You can use that here. You could, if you wanted to. Go back to the eighth notes. You could if you wanted to. Like a true nature's child I was.
Born bona be wild we could climb so high I never want to die.
I think that sounds really cool at this point because you just came from.
You know, fire all your guns at one side exploded to space. Like a true nature's child I will bomb bona be wild.
So it's a cool little. It's a cool little dynamic change in your strumming. And even though you're just a beginner, you can do that. You can add in these slight little dynamic changes to bring these songs to life a little bit more. At the end of the chorus, there's this really exciting and cool section. Everyone's going to play this the same, whether you're a beginner or late beginner. We're going to play the chords and we're gonna hold them for four counts. Okay? So it's gonna be an E chord. Two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, 2, 3, 4. One, two, three, 4. So it's E, D, E, D. And that's all we're gonna do. We're just gonna strum it once, hold.
It for Born to be wild.
Two, three, four.
One, two, three, four. One, 2, 3, 4. One, two, 3, 4.
One, 2, 3, four. One, two, 3, four. So if I put that whole chorus section together, it's going to sound like this.
Like a true nature's child we were born bonnaby wild we could climb so high I never wanna.
One, two, three, four. One, two.
Ready and born to be W.
One, two.
Eddie and Bo to be wild.
One, two, three, Four. One, two, three, 4. Now, if you're a beginner to late beginner and you had so much fun playing this Steppenwolf song that I would highly recommend that you go check out my beginner song playlist right over there, where I'll show you a list of other great beginner level songs that you can play today.
