Stand By Me Guitar Tutorial

Welcome to my Stand By Me Guitar Tutorial by Ben E. King. This easy 4-chord song on guitar is great for beginners. It uses the most common chord progression ever, and a very simple strumming pattern.

We’re going to do it 2 ways: with and without a capo. The no-capo version requires a barre chord, so if you need help with that, I recommend checking out this mini-series covering all the basics (link here).

The lesson begins with the “no capo” version, which requires 4 chords: A, F#m, D and E. The only tough one is F#m, and if you’re struggling, as I mentioned above, you should check out my barre chord mini-series for help with that one. Otherwise, it’s not too tough. We strum all the chords together, downstrokes only, just to work out the switches and get the chords in the right order.

After that, we learn a strumming pattern. It’s almost identical to “the most common strumming pattern” (that we cover in our rhythm eBook) but has 1 thing added to it: a muted stroke. We spend some time going over that, before putting the chords and strumming together and playing through the song.

Next we take a look at the easy version of the song, which requires a capo. The chords are G, Em, C and D. These are all really basic chords, but I still take the time to show you some tricks to help switch faster. After that we put it together with the most common strumming pattern (D Du uDu) and that’s that!

I hope you enjoy the lesson and I’ll see you soon!
-James