Chords for How to play 'I Saw The Light' - Beginner Guitar Lesson

_ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ _
_ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ [G] _ Hey _ everyone, welcome to Music with Ryan.
I'm of course Ryan, and for today's lesson we're going to go over the [N] classic country
gospel bluegrass tune, I Saw the Light, written by Hank Williams, Sr.
And I see a lot of bluegrass bands do this tune, and I used to sing this tune when I performed. _
So I wanted to create a nice little beginning bluegrass solo for you, work on some double
stops, some more alternate picking, _ and some, you know, starting to get a little fancy towards
the end of the break, but again, staying close to the melody, but getting that bluegrass
feel going a little bit with your solo.
So this video lesson's about 25 minutes in length, comes with the PDF tabs and four backing tracks, alright?
So starting from about 120 beats a minute, all the way up to 200, so you can get your
performance speed going.
I've also included a nice rhythm lesson as well, so just kind of a 10 minute overview
of how I play rhythm.
Three chord song, fairly simple, but I just talk about some classic bass walks that I
would do, and a little bit of some nuances in the right hand to kind of give a little
more energy to the rhythm playing.
Alright so, if you like the way this lesson's going, I encourage you to go over to my website
where you can purchase the full length, but for now we're going to give you a little preview
of what's to come, close ups of my left and right hand, tabs on the screen here, and we're
going to start diving into this bluegrass solo for I Saw the Light.
Thanks for watching, please subscribe.
Alright so let's go ahead and walk through I Saw the Light, in the key of [G] G, and just
remember that the markings on the bottom of the staff are our pick direction, so if you
see that below the first note there, that _ staple looking thing is a downstroke, and
the V shape is an upstroke.
Another thing to take note on the tab too is that you see a line, in the first full
measure there is a line going across from one note to the next, and there's a parenthesis
around it, and that's a tie, so we're not actually going to play the note in parenthesis,
it's just tied over to that note, okay?
And the P's mean pull off, and the H's mean hammer ons, so yeah, just wanted a reminder of that.
So I'm going to play the first [D]
two and a half measures here, and then we'll break it down,
play it a couple times.
It starts on beat four, as you see those squiggly lines, if you didn't know those are quarter
note rests, so it'd be like one, two, three. _
_ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Do that again, two, three, [D] sorry, one, two, three.
_ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ And I'm not fingering the whole G chord there, I [D] could, _ _ [E] _ [G] _ _
_ _ I'm playing one little wrong note,
you could, but I'm just going to make sure I got these two down here in the third fret
of the B and the E string, kind of strumming them, the bottom three or four strings on
my strum pattern.
_ _ So kind of all starts that first measure and a half there, [D] it's pretty much on one string,
it's all on the D string there, _ and so we got a couple eighth notes, _ _ _ and the first full
measure there, four and one, two and, [A] and four and.
Okay, a little [D] syncopation in the middle, _ four and one, two and, [A] and four and.
So we have a double up in there in the middle if you notice, _ yeah, there's a double up,
that tie kind of creates that double up.
_ [D] Down, up, down, down, up, [E] up.
_ [A] _ Whoops, _ I pull off, it's almost [D] harder to do those pull offs slow. _ _ _ _
_ [A] _ It's an excuse though, I should be able to do it slow. _
_ [D] Yeah, four and one, two and, [A] and four and.
And the pull offs too, you [D] want to pull straight down, [A] you almost want to grab it with your
[D] finger, get a nice [B] clean, strong pull off.
You don't want, _ you don't want to pull out, out where, you want to pull towards the [D] ground.
You see some guys flick [E] up, that works too.
_ [D] I mean, professional players do that.
I pull down, [E] I've always been [D] taught that.
They both work, I like pulling down. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ Okay, and then the [G] next measure there is _ hit _ an open G string, and a down, that's what
the, then we have a little strum _ on those bottom three strings, three or four.
_ _ _ _ Pretty straight ahead.
One, two and three, four and. _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ [D] _ _ _ [B] _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ _
[D] _ _ One, two and, [E] and four [G] and, one, two and three, four and.
Okay, so I like to count, if I'm having trouble with a measure or two, I really encourage
you to count your way through it.
If you can say it, you can play it. _
And it might be uncomfortable at first, but I promise if you can do that, it'll be very
helpful practice tip, is to count while you play it, count out the rhythm, even without
playing, count it out, and then play it. _ _ _
So just [D] that measure again, we'll move on here.
One, two, three, _ _ [E] two, [G] _ _ _ _ _
_ three. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ My down ups there, you know, strumming the G again, it's on the bottom three, if you
hit the bottom three or four, it's alright, but it's really on that bottom three.
I might finger the whole G chord, maybe as I'm playing, so I don't get some overtones. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ So now, moving on to measure four there, the next three measures sound like this, it's
kind of the same, this measure's the same. _ _ _