Hallelujah Guitar Tutorial (Fingerstyle) Leonard Cohen

Hallelujah Guitar Tutorial (Fingerstyle)

Welcome to my Hallelujah Guitar Tutorial (Fingerstyle) by Leonard Cohen. Using 5 of the basic shapes, and a very easy fingerpicking pattern, I’ll teach you how to play Leonard Cohen’s most famous song, in the same style that Jeff Buckley would play it.

We break it all down: the chord switching, the counting, the pattern, in a simple easy-to-understand way, so no matter what your level, even as a beginner, you’ll be able to pick up this classic fingerpicking song.

“Hallelujah Fingerstyle” CHORDS: G, C, D, Em, B7

“Hallelujah Fingerstyle” FINGERPICKING PATTERN: TIM RMI

(it’s weird to type these out… you’ll see in the lesson how simple it is!)

“Hallelujah Fingerstyle” TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 0:00 – INTRO
• 2:02 – CHORD SHAPES
• 2:33 – SWITCHING TIPS
• 4:15 – SWITCHING PRACTICE
• 6:02 – HOW TO COUNT THE RHYTHM
• 6:46 – FINGERPICKING PATTERN
• 9:25 – FINGERPICKING PLAY-ALONG
• 11:00 – USING A CAPO FOR SINGING
• 11:39 – FAREWELL!

We start off with the chord shapes. This song uses five basic shapes: G, Em, C, D, B7. It’s basically the most common chord progression in the world plus B7. We work out shapes we practice switching between them, and then we play through the chord shapes using downstrokes only, counting along. And this song is a little bit different: instead of counting to four, we only have to count to two, so we play each chord for two downstrokes.

But then, when we add the pattern, our counting goes “one and uh – two and uh”. So, the basic unit is two, and we’re subdividing each of those numbers into three little pieces. This gives us 6-8 counting. We practice counting by itself, and then we learn the finger picking pattern.

The fingerpicking pattern itself is quite simple; We ascend and then descend through our fingers: thumb, index, middle, ring, middle, index. Essentially going up and down with our fingers on each chord shape.

I show you which strings to pluck for each chord because it’s a little bit different, depending on the shape, and then we put the finger picking pattern together with the chords and play through the entire song.

Finally, we discuss singing and playing at the same time. It’s important to use a capo if you wish to adjust this for your voice. For some people, this chord progression is too low, for some people it’s too high, and a capo lets us adjust that and find a sweet spot where it’s easy to sing. And that’s it!

Hope you enjoy this lesson. See you soon!

-James

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