Strum Along! Feliz Navidad Guitar Lesson

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, I have a great Christmas song here. It's Feliz Navidad by Jose Feliciano. Let's talk about the chords we're going to be using. We're mostly going to be using an A chord, a D chord and a G chord. So all of our choruses, it's just open chords. Now on the verses, we do have a B minor that comes in, but it only comes in twice throughout the entire song. So it's not really a huge deal. And if you're not proficient with bar chords, that's okay. I got a couple easy fixes for you you to help you get through this song. So the easiest way to play a B minor chord is to do your first, second and third fingers on an angle. So it kind of looks like a really squished C chord. So first finger is on the second fret of the first string, second finger is on the third fret of the second string, and then the third finger is on the fourth fret of the third string or G string. All right, so if you just play that sounds a lot like Hotel California because that's the chord Hotel California starts on, I think is a B minor. We have this little B minor chord. Alright. If you would like to get a fuller sound, you can move the third finger up to the third fret on the D string and put the pinky right below.

Just gives you a slightly warmer sound, a fuller V minor chord without having to do that full bar. So in this song we're going from a D chord into a B minor. So if you wanted to do that easy B minor, you'd move the first finger down all the way to bottom string. Second finger would slide up, third finger would slide up, and then you'd have the easy B minor chord. Okay. So you just want to try playing those bottom three strings. It's not going to sound as full or as nice as a full barre chord, but it will help you get through those two points where you have to touch upon this B minor.

So I'm going to give you three strumming variations. When I played this song, I would take typically vary between two of them, but the easiest one is going to be 1, 2 and 3 and 4. And so if I play a G chord, okay, it would be 1, 2.

And 3 and 4. And so that's down, down, up, down, up, down, up again, 1, 2 and 3 and 4. M.

Okay, so going to be the timing that we're going to use. And you could use that strumming pattern for the Entire song, it would sound perfectly fine. It's going to sound like this.

Okay? And on all the ends of these courses, we're going to be doing a little mute like I just did there, which is you play a D chord for one measure.

And then you play a down strum on the one beat and then immediately mute the guitar with your fretting hand. So it's.

See how I'm using my fretting hand to just touch the strings and it completely kills the sound. That's how we're going to mute the guitar. So that's option one. Option two. I kind of like using option two and three. So for the verses, I will. Typically the part where it goes, I.

Want to wish you a merry Christmas.

Feel like that's like a little bit more oomph to it. So I like to have a little bit more of a lively strum. So I would either do this one here, which. The first one I just showed you, or this one, which is a little bit harder because it's syncopated.

So it's down, down, up, up, down, up, 1, 2, and.

And 4.

And.

So it's the same strum. I just. Except we're not doing it down on the third beat.

So it's 1, 2 and. And 4, and 1, 2 and. And 4 and.

But if you notice my strumming hand, I'm still strumming down on three.

1, 2, and 3 and 4. And 1, 2 and 3 and 4. And.

I think this works really, really well on the verses. And don't worry, we're going to do a full playthrough for you guys here, too, I think on the verses. Sounds really great.

I want to wish you a merry Christmas I want to wish you a merry Christmas I want to wish you a merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart.

And again, we have that mute on the very, very end there. So I like using that for the verses and then on the choruses. And I kind of like opening the strum up even more. So we're going to remove yet another downbeat. So now we've removed the downbeat on the three. We're going to remove the downbeat on the two. So for some of you, this might be tricky because we're going to have to do multiple up strums in a row without a down in between. It's going to sound like this.

Okay, so it's down, up, up, down, up, down, up, up, down, up. 1&M4M. 1&M4M.

Now for syncopated rhythms like This I often tell students, put the pick down, try and clap it.

Okay? And then bring your pick. Once you get the timing down, bring it back to the guitar.

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

I think this works really well on the choruses to kind of open things up. And then you get to that Merry Christmas part and you switch over to the down, down, up. Strumming powder gives it a nice little spice. So what I'm going to do so you guys can have something to practice with, I'm going to do a little playthrough. It's only a couple choruses and a couple verses. Very, very simple song structure. And I'm going to play through with those two different strumming patterns. If you need to use the settings cog to slow things down, feel free to slow me down. But we're going to take it from the top.

So we got 1, 2, 1.

To Felis Navi Dam.

Felice navidab.

Feliz nabi d.

I want.

To wish you a merry Christmas I want to wish you a merry Christmas I want to wish you a merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart.

I want to wish you a merry Christmas I want to wish you a merry Christmas I want to wish you a merry Christmas on the bottom of my heart.

I hope you enjoyed this fairly simple Christmas song. I do have an entire Christmas playlist right over there that you can go check out. And I do have a Christmas course. I'll put a link in the description below for you guys to go and check that out.