Norwegian Wood Guitar Lesson – The Beatles


"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" was released by The Beatles on the 1965 album Rubber Soul.

Since it's release it has been considered to be one of John Lennon's finest compositions and ranks consistently as one of the greatest songs ever written.

In this Norwegian Wood guitar lesson video I will demonstrate all of the acoustic guitar parts to this great classic note-for-note.

The track also contains a Sitar (played by George Harrison), but those parts will not be demonstrated since he simply followed the melody line we will already be playing on acoustic guitar for most of the song.

First off, be sure to tune your guitar to standard tuning then place a capo at the 2nd fret. During the lesson I will be referring to all the chords and notes as if the capo is the zero fret. So for instance, if I say 2nd fret in the video I mean second fret above the capo (which in reality is the 4th fret on the guitar). This should make it much easier to follow along if you look at it in this fashion.

The song's main riff contains a melody that is played with strumming in between the various melodic phrases. It requires you to keep a D major chord shape in your hand at all times while simultaneously playing the melody. This can be a bit tricky, especially with controlling the pick enough to hit the right string when playing the melody notes. Try to keep and nice a relaxed wrist. That relaxed feel will not only help you perform the chord strums more smoothly, but also will keep your wrist and hand more relaxed when attempting to play the intricate melody notes.

We have only one other section of the song to learn and it is quite simple. We will be doing basic strumming with basic open position chords, so no problem there.

"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is just an excellent track for every guitarist to learn. Besides being a great picking exercise, it contains some of the best songwriting and lyrics on the era.

Hope you guys enjoy learning it!

Carl...

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Norwegian Wood Guitar Lesson - The Beatles

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