While My Guitar Gently Weeps Acoustic Guitar Lesson

We have a lot of chords for this. While my guitar gently weeps Guitar lesson. I'm going to go through them step by step with you. There's going to be some different voicings because we don't have a full band behind us. It's just us on the acoustic guitar. So let's talk about some of these chords. Lots of great open chords. A lot is going to be played around A minor. Okay. We also have a D chord. We have an E chord. Okay. We have an F major 7 chord. All right. And then we're also going to have some variations where we have an A minor G chord, which you're gonna have to use your pinky to reach and get that little G note on the top here. This third fret on the top string, that's your G note. Now, ideally, if we had a bass player with us, they would take over playing some of these weird notes. But since we're just acoustic guitar by ourselves, we're gonna try and take over some of it to make it sound more like the song. We also have a D F. So it's a D chord with the F sharp on the bass. I like to grab this with my thumb. Very, very common thing. Like Layla, Eric Clapton. I use the thumb a lot to grab the bass notes. I just find it easier. My hand is also stretched out enough for that to still be comfortable. Or you could do the four fingered version with your pinky. I just like flipping this right up and grabbing that bass note with my thumb. So that's what I do on that chord. Then we have some other bar chords that we're going to be coming in here with some B minor, okay, we have a C sharp minor. Okay. We also have F sharp minor. And I think that covers all of our bases in terms of chords. But if any others show up, we'll approach them with each section. So let's start with the intro of the song.

Now, the intro has a lot of piano. Okay. So we're just gonna be playing some chords. We're gonna keep a simple strumming pattern right now. And you know, you could make it fancy, spice it up to, to try and match up the piano as best as possible. The guitar is really not doing a ton in the intro. But what we're going to do, we're just going to do this strumming pattern. We're going to go 1, 2, 3 and 4M.

And I really want you to emphasize the bass notes on those down strums.

Keeping it simple. Could I do something really intricate and be like.

Yes, you. You could start getting into some 16th note patterns and really strumming it up. But the guitar, it's not doing any of that in, you know, when you listen to the record. And just quickly, if you guys wanted to know what I was doing there, I think it's 1, 2, a 3 and 4, and a 1, 2, a.

3 and four, and a 1, 2, A 3 and four.

If you wanted a crazy 16 note pattern, you could use that. But I'm just going to keep it simple for now. All right, so you could see. See, I went from an A minor chord. The next chord is going to be that A minor G. Okay? So we're getting that G note in the bass to create some movement here. Because if you just go.

It doesn't sound as much like the song without that G bass note popping through. Next we have D slash F sharp.

Followed by F major 7.

Then we just have a regular A minor G.

D.

Okay, so just simple acoustic guitar strumming. And this is essentially going to repeat for the intro. So that's the great thing about this song is the chord progression for the verse and the intro. Very, very repetitive. Okay, so it's the same eight chords. It's eight chord chord progression. You just play it once through for the intro and then you play it twice through for the verses. So let's give it a try. Intro and verse right now. One, two, here we go.

I look at you all and I see Love is sleeping.

While my guitar gently weeds.

I look at the floor and I see it Neat sweeping.

Still my guitar gently weeps.

So you can see As I got into that verse, I really focused on. On letting that bass note ring out a little bit more.

Because that's the thing with this A minor G chord, it's. It's kind of hard to get that A note to ring. I have smaller hands, so it's probably not going to ring out completely. True. So if you just focus on that bass note.

You can get more of the sound to come through on that. So that's the verses, as you can see, very, very simple chords. Where the harder chords come in is this next section, the chorus. I'm going to show you a couple little options you can have for this section. So this Beatles song, it's actually. Someone asked me what my favorite guitar solo was, and it's this, the guitar solo in this song. And it's funny because you guys, if you know me, my name is Lauren Bateman. I help make the guitar make sense. You guys know I'M a huge Beatles fan and this is my George Harrison Gretsch over here. And I was like, yeah, I really like. While my guitar gently weeps, the teacher was like, you do know that Clapton plays that solo? And I was like.

So my favorite Beatles guitar solo is actually played by. By Eric Clapton. But I want to make a side note here because if you've ever seen. I forget what it was. It was a special. And it was like Tom Petty, it was Prince, it was Clapton. I don't know if Clapton was there, but Prince goes and plays the guitar solo for this and he is absolutely amazing. He melts your face off. So I'll put a link up there if you guys want to go check that out. Probably one of the most amazing versions of this solo that I've heard. So let's talk about this chorus because the key is going to change now. So we got a whole slew of different chords. All right, we got A chord, we have F sharp, minor. We have B minor, we have C sharp, minors. A whole bunch of bar chords are coming into this section right now. So we could stick with the same exact strumming pattern that you just used. It'll work just fine. So to sound like this, I don't.

Know why.

Nobody told you.

How to unfold your love.

And it sounds great, but we just did that in the verse. And again, we don't have the electric guitar in the background. We don't have a band. What can I do to kind of spice this up a little bit if I were going to perform this by myself, so. So if I were playing this, I might opt to pick this section of the song. Just doing an eighth note picking pattern. I probably wouldn't keep it consistent. I probably improvise a little bit. But this part of the song opens up a bit, so let me show you what that would sound like.

I don't know why.

Nobody told you.

How to unfold your love.

I don't know how.

So you can see that how it adds a little bit of interest into the song. And I'm not doing anything super, super specific here. I'm kind of going from the bass note, I'm picking down 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And so probably for these five and six string chords, I'm just playing an arpeggio all the way down. I might be doing some back and forth too. I might not always go all the way down. You can hear too. I brought in some strumming into the mix too. So if you're coming from, you know.

You know, still my guitar gently.

I don't know why.

Nobody told you.

How to unfold your love.

I don't know how Wrong chord. But you can see all I'm doing. So let's take this a chord. I'm just going 5, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And I'm just playing an eighth note picking pattern and I'm arpeggiating the chord. Same thing for B minor. 5, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Same for C sharp minor.

And you can vary it up, but you could just stick with these straight arpeggios and it really, really opens up the song for this. So the F sharp minor would be the other example. It's a six string chord.

Okay. So I'm probably going 6, 4, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4. I'm skipping over the fifth string on that. And that's the other thing you heard. Kind of had a dead note there. If you're gonna pick, you gotta make sure that those bar chords will ring through. So the next verse you can either go right back into what we were doing, but if you're a performer like me, you might want to change up the dynamics again. And this song starts to get heavy the further and further you go into it. So I would almost recommend switching up to either. A lot of downs all down 8th strum. So you could do this. You go 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and four. And.

While my guitar gently weeps.

That'S one option, another one that I really like. And I'd probably mix it up between both of these is just kind of a.

One and two and three. One and two and three. One and 2 and 3. One and 2 and 3.

Gently weaves.

So you can hear all these different little strumming patterns, all these embellishments you can add to a song like this. There's a lot going on here, okay. Especially with that lead guitar in the background. It adds a lot of depth. And if you're trying to play the song without the lead guitar, you as the rhythm guitar player kind of have to step up your game. So let's take this from the beginning. Let's do an intro, verse, chorus and another verse. We'll throw in some of these embellishments and I'll show you how I would go about playing and singing this song on the acoustic guitar. Alright, one, two. Ready? M.

I look at you all and I see the love that's sleeping.

Still my intelligently weeps.

I look at the floor and I see.

Sweeping.

Still my guitar genly wee.

I don't know why.

Nobody told you.

How to unfold your love.

I don't know how.

How someone controlled you.

They bought and saw.

You.

I.

Look at the world and I notice it's turning.

My guitar January.

Every mistake we surely be learning.

To my guitar gender.

So there is a quick tutorial on how to play while my guitar gently weeps on the acoustic guitar. But if you love the Beatles as much as I do, please go check out my Beatles playlist right over there where there's tons of songs for you to have fun on your guitar with.