Hey everyone! In this lesson I’m going to teach you how to play Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus. It’s an excellent choice for beginners because it only uses two chords and a simple strumming pattern.
Now, if you’re working on your very first chord shapes and learning to strum, I recommend checking out my beginner guitar course “Learn Guitar Once-And-For-All” – https://goodguitarist.com/beginner-guitar-course/
It’ll guide you through all the basics, from where you’re at now, all the way to being able to play along with literally hundreds of thousands of songs.
If you’re not quite sure about investing in lessons yet, I also have a free resource. It’s my 7-Day Beginner Challenge, designed to get you to the point where you can play along with songs just like this! – https://goodguitarist.com/beginner-challenge/
The lesson begins with two chord shapes E and A. I also show you the Asus2 chord, which is a simpler version of A. Switching between these two chords is an absolute breeze and one of the first things I show my 1-on-1 students.
Next we strum through the chord shapes, counting along to make sure we’re strumming each one the right number of times.
And after that, we take a look at the strumming pattern, which is very simple and with a little bit of counting you should have no problem getting it.
Finally we put that all together and play through the tune!
This is a very simple one, but it’ll help you learn to keep track of where you are in the music since it isn’t just “play this chord once, then the other one ones” – you actually need to count and build up your musical skills to get through it.
Best of luck!
-James
