Easy Two-Chord Guitar Song Lesson: Deep In The Heart of Texas

This easy beginner guitar lesson shows you how to play Deep In The Heart Of Texas. This 1941 song is a popular American song that sings the merits of the state of, you guessed it, Texas. The title of the song was borrowed to name a 1942 western film about the restoration of Texas to the United States after the American civil war.

 

In this lesson you'll learn the chords and a simple strum pattern to play the song in the key of D. The lesson ends with tips on making your performance a little more polished once you've mastered the basics.

 

Are you ready Cowboy? Let's go, yee-haw!

 

Chords Used In The Song

This song follows the common I - V chord pattern. It is easy to play in the key of D, with D major and A major chords shown below. If you prefer you can also play it in the key of A, A major and E major chords. Choose whichever pair you are most comfortable with.

 

     

Strum Pattern

Remember this is a song for rough and raunchy cowboys so you've got to give it some gusto and swing. You can strum the two-bar pattern “down down up down up down up | down down down up down” shown below, but if you find it too hard use the basic four down strokes pattern. This pattern repeats twice for each line of the song.

 

 

The Song

Here are the words and chords to the song for you to sing and play along with. The chords have only been noted for the first verse, the exact same pattern repeats all the way through the rest of the song.

 

D

The stars at night - are big and bright

                     A

Deep in the heart of Texas

The prairie sky - is wide and high

                     D

Deep in the heart of Texas

 

The Sage in bloom - is like perfume

Deep in the heart of Texas

Reminds me of - the one I love

Deep in the heart of Texas

 

The cowboys cry - ki-yip-pie-yi

Deep in the heart of Texas

The rabbits rush - around the brush

Deep in the heart of Texas

 

The coyotes wail - along the trail

Deep in the heart of Texas

The doggies bawl - and bawl and bawl

Deep in the heart of Texas

 

Performance Tips

You can embellish the song with these performance tips, why not give them a try when you've mastered the basic version.

 

Tapping/clapping - You can liven up your performance with four swift taps on your guitar table at the end of each verse line. This is also a great opportunity for some audience participation. Encourage your audience to clap heartily in time with your tapping and join in to sing each "Deep in the heart of Texas".

 

Bass strum - Give your strumming a jaunty touch by picking only the bass string of the chords on beat one. For the D and A chords these are the fourth and fifth strings respectively and for A and E it's the fifth and sixth strings. Resume the normal strum pattern on beat two.

Guitar Speed Building Exercise

Here’s a guitar speed building exercise I discovered on the Guitarjamz.com YouTube channel. I’ve been playing it for a week now and I find it a helpful warm up exercise that builds finger agility.

 

 

Click here to view the video on the site if you’re viewing in an RSS reader or email.

Click here to get 10 free beginner guitar lessons from GuitarJamz.com.

What Are Your Guitar Chord Questions?

March is going to be guitar chords month on Not Playing Guitar. Over the course of the month you'll find posts covering different types of chords and offering tips on how to go about learning and using them. To make these posts as useful and relevant as possible I'd like to hear from you. What kind of guitar chord information would you like to see covered here on Not Playing Guitar?

Here are a few questions to help stimulate your ideas...

 

• What are your guitar chord goals?

 

• What kind of chords are you interested in learning about?

 

• What are your guitar chord challenges or problems?

 

• What would you like to achieve with guitar chord playing?

 

• …

Please use the comments link below to leave your questions, problems and suggestions. I'll try to address as many of them as I can during March's "Guitar Chords Month".

Easy Beginner Two-Chord Song Lesson - London Bridge

This beginner guitar lesson shows you how to play the children's song London Bridge Is Falling Down. Not only will this song entertain your children, it's easy to play too.

 

London Bridge has in fact fallen down many times during its long history, dating over 2000 years. The first bridges were built and rebuilt of wood until the 12th century when it was rebuilt in stone after being destroyed by a fire.

 

In this lesson you'll learn the chords and a simple strum pattern to play the song in the key of G. Let’s get started with the chords you’ll need.

 

Chords Used In The Song

The two chords used to play this song are shown in the diagrams below.

 

              

If you're unfamiliar with the G major chord it might take a little practice to get used to it. You have to stretch your fingers from string one to string six. Use the first three fingers of your left hand (if you're right-handed), your index on the 2nd fret 5th string, second finger on the 3rd fret 6th string, and the ring finger on the 3rd fret 1st string.

 

Practice fingering this chord without worrying about strumming or picking until you get the hang of it. Then, still without strumming, practice changing between G and D. You'll find it easier to learn the chord fingerings if you don't strum while you do it.

 

Of course, to play the song you'll have to strum, so let's take a look at a simple strum pattern to use for this song.

 

Strum Pattern

The rhythm of this song has two beats per bar, this is known as 2/4 time, pronounced "two four". To get started you can simply strum down twice on each chord.

 

The Song

Here are the words and chords to the song for you to sing and play along with. Remember, strum down twice on each chord and sing to help you keep your place. Note that the chord pattern is the same on each verse.

 

Verse 1

G                G

London bridge is falling down

D             G

Falling down, falling down.

G                G

London bridge is falling down,

D         G

my fair lady

Verse 2

G                G

Take the key and lock her up,

D            G

lock her up, lock her up.

G                G

Take the key and lock her up,

D         G

my fair lady

Verse 3

G                G

Build it up with silver and gold,

D                G

silver and gold, silver and gold.

G                G

Build it up with silver and gold,

D         G

my fair lady

 

I hope you’ll enjoy learning and sharing this easy beginner guitar song. If you have any questions please use the comments link below to ask.

 

Photo by siddhu2020.

5 Acoustic Guitar Love Songs For Your Valentine

Today is St. Valentine’s day, and what better way to get close to your loved one than with a romantic acoustic guitar song. Here’s a selection of five easy to play love songs for you to choose from. You only need three or four chords so if you hurry there’s time to learn one before this evening.

 

1. Stand By Me, Ben E. King

Four chords are all you need for this 1960s ballad, A, F#m, D, E.

Click here for tab from Ultimate Guitar.

 

2. Wonderful Tonight, Eric Clapton

A little more complicated, you’ll need 6 chords for this Clapton hit, G, D, D/F# C, B, Em.

Click here for tab from Ultimate Guitar.

 

3. Colours, Donovan

An easy to play love song from 1960s folk star Donovan, D, G, A7.

Click here for tab from Ultimate Guitar.

 

4. All I Want Is You, U2

Another easy three chord song, you can play with or without the capo, G, C, Em.

Click here for tab from Ultimate Guitar.

 

5. Every Breath You Take, The Police

More of a challenge with this song that requires no less than 8 chords, this time it’s A, F#, D, E, C, B, F, G.

Click here for tab from Ultimate Guitar.

 

Photo by Quinn.Anya.

Confessions Of A Tab Addict

How many files or pages of unplayed guitar tab do you have laying around on your computer's hard disk or in your book shelves?
I have a lot of this clutter laying around that I've gathered over the years. Songs or exercises that looked like a great idea at the time. But after downloading them and filing them away they never got played, or were played a couple of times but abandoned because of their difficulty.
The point is, it's much easier to find and download a tab file than it is to learn how to play it well. To play it well you need to plan how to approach it and spend time and effort to practice your way through the hard parts.
So this year, I'm going to make two changes:

1. I'll spend less time searching for and downloading new tab files and spend more of that time practicing the ones I have already.
2. I'll use my ears more to figure out the guitar parts I want to play instead of just looking for the tab.

What about you, do you have more tab than you can play laying around? Let us know in the comments.

Photo by Richard 'Tenspeed' Heaven.

Acoustic Guitar Riffs–Sheryl Crow, Strong Enough

Here’s a short lesson showing how to play the main acoustic guitar riff from Sheryl Crows’s hit song Strong Enough. This song from the Tuesday Night Music Club album reached number 5 in the US charts in 1995.

 

First up, here’s the tab for the arpeggio played on the intro and throughout the verses.

 

 

The first thing to notice is that this piece is in 3/4 time. There are three beats to each bar divided into 2, 4 and 2 parts respectively. To get the feel of the rhythm you can say the phrase “Grapefruit watermelon apple”, over each bar.

 

Second interesting thing to notice is that open third string in the Bm chord, play the Bm without barring your index finger across the second fret.

 

Have fun learning and playing the song, it’s a really nice sounding arpeggio. Listen to Strong Enough to hear what it sounds like.

Learn Drop D Tuning With The Beatles

My guitar playing and blogging has been out of action for most of the past two weeks thanks to a heavy bout of flu. I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things learning to play Come Together, by The Beatles.

 

You can learn to play this song easily thanks to the video lesson from Marty Schwartz below. The song is played using drop D tuning. Drop D is an easy way to start experimenting with alternative tuning and is lots of fun to play with for bluesy tunes in the key of D. You can also use it with a capo to play in other keys such a E or F.

 

To tune your guitar to drop D simply lower the 6th string until it sounds like the D note on the open 4th string. It’s quite easy to do it by ear.

 

 

If you’re not familiar with the song Come Together listen to the second video below to hear it.