Sweet Caroline Guitar Lesson Neil Diamond - Guitar Strumming & Chords

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. And in this lesson video, we're going to be going over the song Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond.

So some of you may know I'm from the Boston area, so I pulled out my Boston Red Sox guitar because I used to hear this song all the time at Fenway park growing up. I'm not really a big Red Sox fan, but I guess that's okay. So this song, we're going to use some easier chords. And in order to do that, we're going to need a capo. And we're going to put a capo on the fourth fret of the guitar. So you just clamp. It's a little clamp. You squeeze it. You put it over the fourth fret closer to the front of the fret. And now we're just going to play normal chords relative to the capo. So the chords used in this song are mostly going to be the G major chord, C major chord, D major chord, and E minor chord. The D7 does come in from time to time. And there are a couple little walk downs that we're going to talk about towards the end of the video. So definitely stick around for those. Now I want to talk about a couple strumming options that we're going to use for these intros and verses. The chorus will talk about a different strum that we're going to use at that time. So I'm going to start with just a G chord, just so that we can hold a G chord. Okay. And what we're going to do is if you're an absolute beginner, I would just stick with four down strums per chord. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, three. And the great thing about this song is that a lot of the chords are played for two measures, which means you really get to hang out on those chords. You don't have to worry so much about switching chords so often. So that's strumming option number one. If you're an absolute beginner, strumming option number two is going to have a little bit more of a swung feel. So Sweet Caroline is not really like a straight beat. It's a little bit more swung. It's 1, 2, 3, a 4 and 1, 2, a 4. And so what do I mean by swung? So this would be an eighth note pattern, not swung. This would be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and very straight. Now here's swung.

So the ups have a little bit of a hop to them. So it might be a little bit tricky if You've never played a swung pattern before. So if you play it straight on time, that's okay. It will still work. But the song itself is actually played with a swung feel. So this rhythm we're going to talk about is basically going to be a one, two. So two downs, down, down, and then it's going to be a four. Up, down, up. Okay. So it'll sound like this.

Okay. So that's the strumming pattern we're going to use for the intros and the verses. And you'll hear it more on the verses. He has kind of this down, down. So what I would do or what an option that you can do in these first couple downs is just really emphasize the lower notes, maybe the bottom two or three of each string. So instead of going.

You might want to go.

So I'm kind of ignoring those treble notes on the first two down strums because when you hear the song, it really has those dun, dun.

Dun.

So we really want to emphasize those bump bumps just to get along with the song. So we're gonna start off with the intro and real quickly, if you need a chord chart to follow along to, I'll put a link in the description below. You can go to my website, laurenbateman.com I have all my chord charts over there. So we're gonna be starting with the D7. Okay, so D7 chord. And we're gonna be playing it for seven, seven measures. I'm not going to play it seven measures through, but that's how the intro starts. We're not going to be playing any of the bass parts. So it just be 1, 2.

So just play, you know, 7D, 7 measures and you'll be all set on the intro. So the next thing we're going to talk about is the verse and we have a few more chords that jump in here. So the verse, the progression is going to be double G, double C, double G, double D. And then we just repeat that again. So we just go through that chord progression twice for our verses. So again we would emphasize those bump, bump. So it would be.

Okay, we play it again double G.

And then C.

Hey, guys, hope you're enjoying this lesson so far. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and turn your notifications on. This way you'll know when I release more lessons just like this one. So. So that's what we're going to be doing on our verses. And don't worry, I'm going to do a full playthrough of a verse, a Pre chorus and a chorus towards the end. But now we're going to move into the pre chorus section. Now, the strumming pattern here really isn't going to change that much. But what is going to change is the chord progression and it's a shorter chord progression. So we have double G, double E minor, two D, seven S, a double C and a double D. Like I said, the song is great. We get a lot of chords for two measures. So if I played that pre chorus, it's still the same strumming pattern. 1, 2, A, 4 and 1, 2, A, 4. And down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, C.

To D.

All right, so. So that's what we're going to do on the pre chorus. Nothing crazy. All the fun stuff happens on the chorus, which is what we're going to jump into right now. So this chorus is going to be broken up into two sections. I'm going to show you a simple way to play through the chorus without the walkdowns. And then I'm going to show you how to play through the chorus and add some of those walk downs to make it sound a little bit more like the song. So the strumming pattern we're going to use for the chorus, we're going to change it up a bit. We're just going to add an extra up strum into the mix. So instead of going down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, we're going to do two ups in a row. It's going to be down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, 1, 2, up, up, 4 and 1, 2, up, up,. 4 and down, down, up, up, down, up.

And that's the strumming pattern that we're going to use for. For the chorus. Now let's talk about the chord progression. Fairly simple. It's going to be a G chord followed by 3C chords, followed by 2D chords. And then we're just going to repeat that whole thing over again. So the chorus would sound like this without any of the walk down. So we've got 1, 2, 3, 4. Sweet Caroline.

So good, so good, so good.

And then you would go to a G, which would get you back into the next verse of the song. So the next section we're going to talk about is the walk down section. We're not doing anything different on the G chord, but we're going to be doing something different on the C chord. So the G chord, we're still doing down, down, up, up, down, up. And then that. That first C chord, we're doing the down, down, up. And then we're playing the C note, which you could just strum the C chord, but it's going to be the C note, which is the top string of the C chord. Your third finger is already on it. We're going to be switching to a C, B chord. So this second finger is going to move up just one string, and then we're going to come back to the C chord. So it's just going to be.

Okay. That's essentially what we're doing, but it's going to sound like this. Read from the G chord.

Okay? Did you hear that? Down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up. And then down, down. Strum the C chord.

Okay? Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

All right. Lines right up with that one more time from the G.

And then the rest of the line, you would just play the same. And then at the very end of the second line of the chorus, instead of playing the D chord for two measures, we're actually going to play D chord for half a measure. C chord for half a measure. That's C. B chord for half a measure. A minor. And then G brings us back to the verse. So it's a walk down. We're basically going D, C, B, a, G. It's a little bass walk down. You want to learn more about bass walk downs, I'll put a link to a video up here for you guys. So let's take this course from the beginning now. How will it sound with this? 1, 2, A. 1, 2, 3, 4. Where it began.

Me.

Was in the spring.

Sam.

There you go. That is how to play Sweet Caroline. Sorry, Boston fans, it took me so long to get to it, but I hope you guys enjoyed this lesson. Leave me a comment and say thanks below. If you enjoyed it, YouTube's gonna pop a couple more videos over here. Go check those out. And I hope to see you guys in another guitar lesson video.