The Beatles Blackbird Guitar Lesson – Guitar Lessons For Beginners

Here’s a new Guitar Lessons For Beginners tutorial for The Beatles’ Song “Blackbird”. This is a great song altogether. It was one of the first finger picking songs that I had learned on guitar. It’s really not that hard of a song to play at all. You just gotta realize that your right hand is doing a lot of work the whole entire time. This song is one of those “pretty acoustic songs” that is great to show off or advertise how well you can play guitar. If you’ve never played a basic finger picking song before, it might take a little bit of time to get down. If you know how to play a couple finger picking songs already, this song shouldn’t be very hard at all to learn to play. The song is played in standard E guitar tuning which is normal compared to the tunings of some of the other Beatles songs.  I’ve also, as usual posted my YouTube videos of my Beatles Blackbird Guitar Cover and my Blackbird Guitar Lesson. I hope you enjoy this guitar lessons for beginners tutorial.

What is The Beatles’ Song Blackbird About?

According to various sources, this song was written about African Americans and the civil rights movement in the US at the time. I always thought it was just about a blackbird, who knew. Paul even stated that it was about the movement that the world was immersed in at the time. He had been reading about the movement in the UK at the time. What else is very unusual or unique about this song is that the track has the vocals, the guitar part and then a ”tapping beat”. The tapping beat was actually caused by scratches in the recording. The birds chirping were added later.

What’s going on in the song?

This song is basically a constant pattern that doesn’t really change with your right hand or picking hand. This pattern remains the same almost through the entire song. The left hand or fret hand is producing basic chords and forming the melody of the song. When you think about playing this song… don’t focus on and get overwhelmed by where your fingers have to be with your picking hand.. just learn one line of the picking pattern and memorize the pattern with your muscles… that pattern is used over and over so that’s basically all you need to know. The guitar chords that are played with your left hand are pretty basic.

The Beatles Blackbird Guitar Chords

Blackbird Guitar Chords are pretty simple. The song is in the key of G major so everything kind of revolves around that. Know your power chords and barre chord formations throughout the fret board. Most guitar chords in Blackbird are made up from them.

Here’s The Blackbird Guitar Lesson and my Guitar Lessons For Beginners:

Blackbird Guitar Cover:

Blackbird Guitar Lesson

One tricky thing about The Beatles’ Song Blackbird

This whole song is very scrambled. The chorus, verse, intro, interlude all blend together. Make sure you go over the layout of the song and think about how many times you’re supposed to play each part of the song (ex. Chorus, intro, etc.).

How To Make You Guitar Sound Like The Guitar In The Recording

I believe I explained this in the Guitar Lessons For Beginners tutorial above but basically any acoustic guitar will work. Make sure you have medium to thicker strings on that guitar and that’s basically about it. Blackbird is a very simple song in terms of the output of the sound.

Beatles’ Blackbird is a great song to try to learn. It will help you to learn basic finger picking and basic guitar chords. The biggest thing to remember is… don’t get overwhelmed with that right hand and remember that it’s the same (pretty much) picking pattern throughout the song, remember to memorize the layout of the song and most of all… HAVE FUN! Have any questions? Let me know! Also, checkout my other Guitar Lessons For Beginners.

Tags: guitar lessons for beginners, the beatles