Louie Louie Guitar Lesson – The Kingsmen

In this Louie Louie guitar lesson video, I will show you how to play all the chords and guitar solo for what is most definitely one of the most played guitar songs of all-time.

It is played so often not only because it is quite easy, but also very effective musically even though the entire song revolves around 3 simple chords. In the first video lesson I will demonstrate those 3 chords and the different rhythms that are used to play them depending on whether it is the verse or chorus.

I think learning Louie Louie is a great rhythm guitar exercise for the beginner guitarist. The verse and chorus use the same chords yet in a completely different rhythm. This demonstrates how a rhythmic shift can really propel a song forward. You won't find a better use of that than you will find here in this Louie Louie guitar lesson.

The proper position to play these chords to recreate the original recording requires you to play same bar chord shapes. Hopefully you will have those under your belt by now but if not, you should check out my bar chord lessons and they will get you up to speed pretty quickly.

Like I said before, the right hand rhythm will be the real focus when learning how to play this classic song. I will show you in detail all of the rhythm guitar patterns so there shouldn't be much confusion on how to approach them.

In the second video lesson we will tackle that great guitar solo. Unlike the rest of the song, the guitar solo is actually quite challenging. It is based around the simple 5th position A minor pentatonic and A blues scale forms, but requires some fast cross string picking and quick left hand moves.

As I mention in the video lesson, it is best to tackle solos like these after you have the sound of the solo memorized already. So listen to the original recording a bit to make sure you are very familiar with it. After that, learning each phrase separately will help you focus on all the individual technical challenges isolated from the rest of the solo before you begin to put them all together into the full solo.

Hope you guys enjoy this one!

Carl...

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Louie Louie Guitar Lesson - Chords/Rhythms

Louie Louie Guitar Lesson - Solo