Up Around The Bend Guitar Lesson – Creedence Clearwater Revival


In this Up Around the Bend guitar lesson video, I will show you how to play this high energy classic from Creedence Clearwater Revival note-for-note.

Released in 1970 off their "Cosmo's Factory" album, "Up Around the Bend" became a huge hit for the band and can still be heard frequently today.

The intro guitar lick to "Up Around the Bend" is perhaps one of the most identifiable in classic rock history. It can be a little bit tricky to play due to the fact that you will need to get good note separation to recreate the recording. But understanding the lick is pretty simple. It consists of playing a D open string drone while playing a melody based around a D major triad followed by the exact same lick played around an A major triad.

The note separation is very important here, so try to focus on that. You will need to roll your index finger to make sure those two notes don't ring together.

During the verse you will be playing a simple Chuck Berry style rhythm with a quick little hammer-on lick toward the very end of it. There are a few different ways you can finger those chords and their embellishments so find what works best for you.

The chorus uses just 3 simple open position chords, so you probably won't have much trouble there.

The guitar solo is sort of a country guitar inspired repeated lick that incorporates some rather quick hammer-ons and pull-offs along with some large bends. One of those bends requires you to play the high E string open while performing a full bend on the G string. In order to do this you will need to use hybrid picking. I use my middle finer to pick the open high E string.

Toward the end of the song, John Fogerty plays a nice little melodic sequence based around a D major triad. Nothing really too challenging here either, so you will probably get it under fingers rather quickly. 🙂

Enjoy!

Carl...

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Up Around the Bend Guitar Lesson - Creedence Clearwater Revival

1 Comment

  1. Giacomo Bergonzi on May 10, 2015 at 5:04 am

    Cheers Carl, wanted to chill out this morning and this lesson gave me the chance to do so even while practicing guitar : )

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