Welcome to my “London Calling” easy guitar lesson + tutorial. This easy four chord song uses some of the most basic shapes on guitar, the most common strumming pattern and a very useful technique called “muting” or “string stopping.”
We begin with the chord shapes. We practice switching between each of them and then we play them using downstrokes only so we can get use to the chord order, and learn how to play through the entire song without worrying about strumming.
Once we’ve taken care of that, we can look at the strumming, which is the most common pattern ever. There’s also another pattern where we play downstrokes only, but we stop the strings on the off-beats to create a cool, percussive effect.
Taking both of these strumming patterns, we add them to our chord progression, and we learn to play the verse, chorus, and intro.
Hope you enjoy my easy acoustic guitar tutorial for London Calling! Otherwise, have fun and practicing, I’ll see you soon.
-James
