This is a great song for strumming through some nice and easy chords. For those of you going through the Chords articles in the Theory section, this is a great example of using typical major and minor chords. It's very suitable for beginners, as is the lead guitar part which we'll show in the next ActionTab. But before that let's look at the main rhythm guitar....

The chords for this song appear in the following order:

Intro:

G major - D major
E minor - D major
G major - to end of intro (when lead guitar stops) and then continue with G major into the 1st verse.

Verses:

Alternate regularly between G major - C major until the chorus.

Chorus:

D major and E minor are played at this point.

Those are the main chords for the song. Although, B minor is sometimes played later in the song too - using the A minor barre shape with your 1st finger at the 2nd fret position.

Getting smooth and fast chord changes is an essential guitar skill. It takes practice, but learning songs like this is a great way to get those fingers familiar with these common chords....and changing between them quickly.

The strumming mostly follows a regular pattern of down and up strums. Follow the ActionTab and listen to it to get a feel for the strumming. Once you get it right for one chord (the G major is the most common chord so try your strumming out with that), you'll be able to get it right for the rest of the chords too.

Remember that you don't have to thumb-mute if that is too difficult for you at this stage. Keep your thumb in the centre of the back of the fretboard instead to get good clean notes and just be more careful with your strumming hand instead. Once your fingers and fretboard hand gets stronger and more used to the chords then you can start using thumb-muting over the top edge of the fretboard to omit unwanted strings from your strums.

Once you can strum one chord with the right rhythm, then it is just a case of working on switching quickly to the next chord and trying out the same strumming pattern. Co-ordinating both hands can be tricky at first but be patient and chip away at it until you can get it smooth between 2 chords (say G major and C major). Then just do the same for the next chord change, and so on, until you can get through the song.

The Bridge in the song does involve some quick muting and chord changes. Just follow the ActionTab and you should be able to get it without too many knots in your fingers!