It's time to learn how to play Lucky Man by The Verve, and it's a perfect beginner / improver guitar song! We only have a few open chords to work with, but the 16th note rhythm pattern gives it a slight step up in difficulty from absolute beginner level.
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Jed Cutler
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I think it's fair to say that this song is a true example of how a simple song can also be a great song. It highlights the fact that even with the simplest chords, and good groove and a simple repeating section or two, you can build a masterpiece! The beauty of the song is what's happening on top of the main guitar partā¦ The vocals, the strings, the dynamics & the wonderful melodies.
So, let's get those guitars in hand and get ready to learn Lucky Man by the Verve!
Lucky Man Strumming Pattern
The first place we will start is with the strumming pattern. This is a pretty unique pattern, and when applied to the chord changes, we have the core of our song!
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Interestingly, this strumming pattern is very similar to "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" by Bob Dylan, which could be an insight to a major influence behind this songā¦ That's a question for Richard Ashcroft I guess!
Jed Cutler
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The first step in learning this strumming pattern is being able to understand how 16th notes work. This is the idea of separating each beat of the bar into 4 notes. At the core of this is the count "one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a", which enables you to divide the correct beats with your strumming hand.
Never done 16th notes?
If you are sitting here quite blankly realising you've never learnt 16th notes in your strumming, please do check out our Beginners Rhythm Challenge which builds you up from 8th notes to 16th notes!
So the strumming pattern we're using for this lesson looks like this:
As you can see, we kinda have a strumming pattern in two halvesā¦ The first simple half where we strum on the one and two beats, and the second half which has more in it. The key part is that you keep your arm moving, even on the strums where you're not playing the strings!
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I take plenty of time to work through every element in this strumming pattern for the first half of the video, so please do watch that as many times as you need! Learn the strumming pattern completely on a simple G major chord first, then we'll apply to the proper chords!
Jed Cutler
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The Ver(s)(v)e...
Ok, ignoring the awful play on The Verve and The Verse (sorry, felt the need to explain that as you're probably thinkingā¦ eh?!), let's dive into the verse chords. They look like this:
One thing you'll notice is that we have the first two chords divided into one bar, and the third chord takes up a whole bar. That means we have to divide our strumming pattern on two chords, the G and D major in bar 1, then the Asus2 plays over the whole strumming pattern in bar 2.
The D major chord also rotates between D major and Dsus2, which is actually a very key part of the sound of the song, so don't skip it! In the chord chart we don't really include it as it complicates the chart too much, but in practice we simply remove the second finger at key points to create this melody.
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I would highly recommend getting that melodically in your head, being able to hum the sound of the D major to Dsus2 section, and then realising that to get that sound on the guitar you just take your second finger away and put it back on the 2nd fret. Simple!
Jed Cutler
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Take your time with the verse as it's the core part of the song! Once you've got it sounding good, we can finish off the final element.
The Bridge / Chorus / Pre Chorus!
I'm not exactly sure what you want to call this section, so perhaps easiest to say it's "section B". We only have two parts to learn in the song, Section A which we've done above, and this new section! What you call it is up to you!
The good news is that the strumming pattern stays the same, so it's just a case of putting the chords in the right order. Here are those chords:
As you can see, this is much simpler! All major or minor open chords, and no fancy Suspended chords or any fiddly parts! Your job is to play each chord over a whole strumming pattern, then move to the next.
This section is only played one time round, before moving back into the A section. Dynamically you probably want to consider the part of the song after the B section as a chorus really, as it can be played louder and with more attack. You'll hear how that dynamic shift is the main difference between sections, as the chords and strumming tend to stay the same.
Want to see us do it?
Finally, if you'd like to see our little YGA Band play this song, check out the video below! I'd like to thank Dan, Camille (drums) and Harrison (bass) for joining me on the track too! PS. Please check out Camille's music page & Harrison's tattoo page here!
Need some extra help?
If any of the chords, strumming or just generally playing along to the song feels like a mountain at the moment then please do sign up to our Guitar Club to get yourself a pathway of learning. Our courses will help you work through all of these mountains, climbing them each steadily! See you there, and have a great week!