Creep Guitar Tutorial – Radiohead

This Creep Guitar Tutorial is designed for players who are looking to step out “beginner-ness” and start incorporating barre chords into their playing.

To play this song exactly like the recording you’d need to play 4 barre chords for the entire time and in the future, if there’s enough demand, we can definitely teach it that way. But for now I’ve devised a simpler way that alternates between easy, open chords and barre chords, in order to give your hand a rest.

This tune uses G, B, C and Cm. We go over these in our eBook and barre chord miniseries (links above). There’s not much after that.. once you nail the chord changes, the song is the same thing, over and over.

The strumming pattern is long, but simple. It’s basically 2 easier patterns, combined into one. You play the strumming pattern 1 time for each chord and that’s it!

After putting the chords and rhythm together, we go over the concept of dynamics and show you how to make the verse a bit more sparse. This allows the chorus to stand out by creating a contrast between the 2 parts. Then we discuss how to make the bridge really HUGE using downstrokes, and when you put it all together, it gives the song an expressive dynamic contour that, even when played solo acoustic, still breathes with life.