A beginner-focused YouTube guitar lesson by Lauren Bateman teaching how to play Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold.” The lesson covers four basic open chords (G, Em, C, D), multiple strumming patterns (straight eighths, down-down-up eighths, and a 16th-note variation), an intro riff built on Em→D with an optional hammer-on, a short walk-down (C→B→A) into G, and a full playthrough/interlude for practice and reference.
Heart of Gold is a great beginner song that focuses on four very easy open chords. But there is a lot of different strumming patterns that I'm going to go through step by step with you guys. There's a really cool intro I'm going to show you. But first let's start off with the chords we're going to be using for the song. Primarily we are focusing around a G chord, an E minor chord, a C chord and a D chord. Okay. My four favorite chords. So many songs you can play with those chords and there's a few different strumming patterns. There is a walk down in this song too. Okay, so I'm going to show you how to play that later. But first let's start out with the intro which is primarily an E minor chord and a D chord. I'm going to show you how to just do it strumming wise. And then I'm going to show you how to add in a cool little hammer on part so it can sound a little bit more like the record.
So the timing on this is an eighth note pattern. This is our first strumming pattern. It's all downs, eighth notes, 1 and.
2 and 3 and 4 and okay, 1, 1 and 2 and 3 and four and.
And then we're going to jump to a D chord, one and two and okay, so that D chord, it's basically just a half measure.
We're strumming one and two and we.
Go to the E minor chord. Alright, so let's put those two measures together. The first measure is all E minor. The second measure is D and E minor.
So we got 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 4m.
Okay. And that E minor chord changes on that and so you feel like you're almost rushing into the E minor chord. If you want to add in the little hammer on part, I'm going to show you what we're going to do and it's great because it's built right off this E minor chord. What we're going to do is we're going to lift up the first finger and play that open a string and then we're going to hammer the first finger finger down. Okay, so it's one pick, two notes and then you're going to pick the D string on the second fret below. It's already in place because of the E minor chord. So altogether it's going to sound like this.
Now I know there's probably some of you who are playing this note and it's Sounding like this.
And you can't get it to ring out yet. If you're one of those people, you know, put it in the comments below. You're not alone. This is very common with hammer ons. What we want to do is we want to. There's a strength component, but there's also a speed component. I always tell people it's like snapping your finger. So if you go very slow and you snap your finger, you're not going to get any sound. But if you go fast.
You'Ll get the snap. Same thing with the hammer on. You have to have speed. So if you. If you do it strong but slowly, you end up muting the string before you actually press it to the fret. So it's a very fast movement. Has to be in time to the timing this is 4E and 4E. And so it's 1 and 2 and.
3 and 4 and 1 and 2.
And 3 and 4E and 1 and.
2 and 3 and four.
And.
So you can pause the video here if you need to go back and practice with that. Because we're going to be moving on to the next section of the song, which is a different strumming pattern. Now, if you're just a beginner, I would recommend just going down, down, up, down, down, up for the strumming pattern. Because each of these chords is now splitting a measure. So each chord we're going to play is two beats. Okay? Two beats each. And if you guys need notes for this to follow along on my website, I do have the notes. So you guys can see the strumming patterns and everything there. So we are going to play an e minor chord, 1, 2. And so that's down, down, up. Then a C chord.
Down, down, up.
Then we have a D chord.
Down, down, up.
And then a G chord. So sound like this.
I wanna live.
I wanna heal.
I've been a minor flow this heart of.
Gold.
So that works for great. Down, down, up. Now if you're a little bit more late beginner, we can add in a little 16th note. It's going to be 1, 2 and a 1, 2 and a 3, 4 and a. When I perform, this is usually how I play the song.
So it's down, down, down, up. Down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up.
So choose whichever version is easier for you because remember, we're going to be going from an eighth note strumming pattern.
To this other strumming pattern, okay? So you need to pick whichever pattern you're going to be able to easily transition in and out of. So we have one more strumming change that's going to come into the song. And it's kind of at the end of these verses where he starts saying.
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold.
We're going back to that straight eighth note rhythm. Okay, so let me just play through this first part of the verse and I'm going to tell you what we're going to do for the walk down that happens at the end. So let me just play through the verse we've got.
I wanna live.
I wanna give.
I've.
Been a miner for this heart.
It'S.
These expressions that never give.
That keeps.
Me searching for a heart of gold.
I'm getting old.
So you can see when we get to that part that keeps me searching the chords are no longer splitting measures, it's a full measure. And we're going right back into that eighth note strumming. Now, you heard me do a walk down at the end. And you can see I like to just play single notes. And the notes we are playing, we're walking from a C note, third fret on the A string. We're going C to the second fret, which is a B note, and then open A. So we're basically going C, B, A. And then we're strumming the G chord. Okay, so it's going to be.
Okay. And then at the very end, we're just going to strum that G chord again. So we've got it.
Keeps me searching for a heart of gold.
I'm getting old.
That keeps me.
Searching for a heart of gold.
I'm getting old.
All right, and then we jump into our interlude.
Which is that same split chord progression again. All right, so that's the majority of the song. I'm going to do a quick playthrough for you guys. I'm going to go from the intro into the verses so that you guys can hear me playing through the different sections of the song. But just listen to the song. Go listen to the record. You're going to hear these sections coming in and out of the song. All right, let's take it from the top. If you need to slow me down, you can use the settings cog there. We're going to start on the E minor. I will play the hammer ons. But if you don't want to, you can just strum that E minor chord and hold it through. Now if you're a member of my fellowship of the strings, I will give you access to a full play along of this song. So if you're a member of my private community, hop on over there and you can find the secret link over there for that video. So we starting with the intro. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
Sam.
I've been a miner for this heart of gold? Oh, it's these expressions I never give?
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold?
Now I'm getting old?
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold?
And I'm getting old.
Now?
If you are huge fans of Neil Young, I highly recommend you go check out my Buffalo Springfield video over there. Great song for beginners. Simple chords, easy strumming patterns, and a lot of fun to play. Go click on that lesson right now.
