This is a fantastic song from two masters of harmony - Simon & Garfunkel. You need a capo to play the song, placed at Fret 6.

The Intro is beautiful, but takes quite a lot of practice. They use 2 guitars in the intro. We only show the main intro guitar here, and will show the other guitar in a separate ActionTab. You can still hear both played together in the normal speed audio.

The intro is fingerpicked and quite hard, so beginners may wish to scoot on to the verses, where things get a lot easier (mainly chord strumming). If you are new to fingerpicking, working through our Fingerpicking section will help you get started.

The intro uses Travis Picking. That is a common fingerpicking style which uses the thumb a lot. The thumb is used to provide alternating bass notes, while the fingers (mostly 1st and 2nd fingers) are used to play higher notes. The fingerpicking isn't too difficult (if you are used to it), but some of the chord changes with the fretboard hand are fast. Therein lies the trickery.

Break the intro down into small chunks. For example, pick the first chord and just practice it until you have it nailed. Then move to the next chord shape and practice it the same way. Then work on playing them together. Rinse and repeat until you get the whole intro. Once you have the first few chords down, the rest will come faster...but there are a few curveballs in there, so watch out!

Verse - Notice that the chord shapes during the verse are all common A minor, G major and C major shapes. Because we have the capo on, this produces different chords. So don't be put off by the following chord names, just think of them as standard chords shifted up the neck (which is exactly all they are):

Eb minor - If fingerpicking from the intro, strum this chord with your 1st or 2nd fingernail and then switch to a plectrum while holding this chord. Then strum through...

Bb major - Notice that sometimes the fingers are removed to strum the open capo notes, and occasionally the Gb maj7 is quickly thrown in.

You don't have to follow each strum perfectly. Just get the overall chords right, and fine tune your playing from the ActionTab when you need to.

Eb minor - Gb major - B major - Gb major - B major - Gb major - B major - Gb major - F note - Eb minor

Immediately after that is the chord sequence underlying the lyrics 'sound of silence':

Gb major - Bb major - Eb minor

So that's the basic chord structure. Just repeat for each following verse. The outro is just a repeat of the first few bars of the intro, using slightly different fingers on the fretboard to set up the final strum.