Tom Dooley Guitar Lesson - Simple TWO Chord Song!

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, I'm going to show you a simple two chord song by the Kingston Trio called Tom Dooley. We are going to need a capo on the second fret for the guitar. This way it will sound just like the record. Now, capo, if you don't know what a capo is, just a little clamp. All right? And we put it on the guitar and it allows us to change the pitch of the guitar, make the notes higher, and still use simple chords. Super fun. So this song has two chords and there's a D chord and an A7. So we're going to go over each of those. If you haven't seen those before, let's start with the A7. I'm going to show you how to play this a little bit differently. So it makes it easier to transition into the D chord. So for A seven, we're going to play the fifth string open. That's our A note. We're going to put our first finger on the second fret of the third string. Okay? And then we're talking the second fret up from the capo. So now everything is relative to this capo. So 1, 2. Okay, so we have first finger on the D string, second fret, we're going to play the E, sorry, the G string open. We're going to put our second finger on the B string at the second fret. And then we're going to play the E string open. So it's going to sound like this.

It's a very twangy sound. That's what those seven chords like, those blues chords.

Okay, Blues chords always use seven. It adds that nice twist twang to it. So once again, open A string. First finger on the D string, second fret open G string, second finger on the B string, second fret. And then high E string is played open. Very twangy sound. Now, the reason I'm having you play it this way because now all we have to do is shift these two fingers down one string each. And we've already got most of our D chord built. So let's go back back to the A7. Okay, so we have our A7 chord here. Move the first finger down one, move the third finger down one. So they're both still in the second frets. All we have to do now is have our third finger come up. And this is the tricky finger. The third finger is going to come up on that B string third fret. And we're playing the bottom four strings. So it's D, G, B, E. Now if you're hearing this on the E string. It could mean that your third finger, this knuckle isn't bent enough. Ooh, just try and bend that knuckle. Also, it could be that you're choking up on the guitar here a little bit. Try and loosen your grip. You don't have to play these chords as hard as you think. And try not to play this third finger back here. You need a lot more pressure back here than you do at the front of the fret. Okay, so if we go from a 7 to D. So we build it, move the fingers, third finger. Okay, okay. Back to a 7.

And then back to D. Okay. You can just practice building these one chord at a time.

Those are the two chords we're going to be using for this song. Alright. So practice those. And then we're going to jump into the strumming.

So we're going to be using an eighth note strumming pattern. What does that mean? We're going to be counting 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Okay, now for this strumming pattern, we can use two different strumming patterns. One is we strum on all of those counts. Let's take our A7 chord. Okay. And we're just going to do down.

Up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Okay, so that's 1 and 2 and.

3 and 4 and let's try it. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, up.

Okay, that's one way to strum. If I switch to my D chord now, I'm going to show you a different strumming pattern if you want to open it up a little bit. I like to give students options. So it's going to be 1, 2.

And 3 and 4 and 1, 2 and 3 and 4 & down, down, up, down, up, up. 1, 2 and 3 and 4& 1, 2 and 3 and 4, and.

So those are the two options. And I think the speed of this song is about this.

Pretty similar to that. People always ask me what tempo is the song. I go off of what I feel. I'm familiar with the song. I'm not super, super familiar with it. That it's in my, my muscle memory in terms of the tempo, but I think that's pretty close. Cool. I just listen to it real quick and it's pretty close. It's like.

That'S more the tempo of the song. So what we're going to do now is we're going to take the refrain and we're Going to take the verse here and we're gonna play through a little bit of Tom Dilley together so we can practice. So I'm gonna sing a refrain, a verse and a refrain, and that will give you a good idea of how to play through the song. I'm gonna use strumming pattern two, which is gonna be the 1, 2.

And 3 and 4 and 1, 2 and.

3. So let's just get that under our fingers right.

Now. 1, 1, 2 and 3 and 4. And 1, 2 and 3 and 4. And down, down, up, down, up, down, up.

Good. So that's. Go up straight strumming pattern. Now if I'm going too fast, use the settings cog down there to slow me down. Put me at like 75% speed. I might sound a little bit drunk, but that's okay. If that's what you need, that's what you do. Okay, we're gonna take it one step at a.

Time. One, two, one, two, here we.

Go. Hang down your head, Tom Dooley Hang down your head and cry.

Hang down your head, Tom Dool.

Poor boy, you're bound to die.

I met her on the mountain.

There I took her life.

Met her on the mountain.

Stabbed her with my knife.

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley Hang down your head and cry.

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley oh, boy, bound to.

Die.

Now you probably notice because I know some of you are very, very observative. I was using my second and third fingers. And you'll notice on that last a. I tried to do it the way I showed you, but my muscle memory is so used to doing it this way, I was actually playing the wrong chord. If you go back and listen, you're going to hear me make a quick little mistake. And I like leaving the mistakes in because it just shows you I'm human just like you. I've been playing guitar for over 20 years. I still make mistakes. It's happened. If you make a mistake, just keep playing through it, okay? You learn the most by playing right through those mistakes. So I hope you guys enjoyed Tom Doolan. If you're looking for another very simple two chord song, check out my Horse with no Name lesson right over there. I'll see you guys in another lesson video real soon.