Drive Guitar Lesson – Incubus

In this Drive guitar lesson, I will show you how to play the guitar chords to this mostly acoustic smash hit from Incubus.

Released in 2000 off of their Make Yourself album, "Drive" became Incubus' biggest hit earning them Billboard's modern rock single of the year honors.

There is some nice chord work in this one that along with the rhythmic pulse, gives "Drive" it's introspective yet flowing character.

I am going to keep this lesson to just the acoustic guitar parts since that is the way it is most often played by the band. There is also only two chord progressions to learn for the entire song.

The opening chord progression makes up the verse and chorus sections of the song as well. It is based around an open voiced E minor chord that moves into an E minor 9th chord. The differences in hand positions between these two chords will probably produce the greatest challenge of the song. When moving to the Minor 9th chord I suggest moving your fret-hand thumb to a little higher position on the back of the neck top facilitate grabbing that chord shape.

From there you will shift down to a pretty standard C major 7th chord followed by a minor 7th interval with each note doubled.

The only other section to learn would be the pre-chorus. It is made up of only two repeated chords, the same C major 7th chord from before as well as a A7 chord. This pre-chorus is much easier to play than the main chord progression so you probably won't have much of an issue getting it under you fingers.

I hope you guys enjoy learning the fun acoustic smash hit from Incubus!

Carl...

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Drive Guitar Lesson - Incubus