The House Of The Rising Sun Guitar Lesson

Interestingly, The Animals didn’t write “House of the Rising Sun,” though they did make it famous. The song is a traditional folk song, often considered a blues standard, and its origins go back to at least the 18th century. Various versions of the song have been recorded by artists like Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and more.

The Animals’ 1964 version, led by Eric Burdon’s powerful vocals and that haunting organ intro, is probably the most iconic. Their rendition helped popularize the song, and it became a hit worldwide. This is the version we're working on today, but do check out some of the older versions if you can find them!

The A Section

In this track, we are working with an A and B section, which essentially loop round and round! It's our job to therefore learn each individually and then start to piece them all together. The A section is probably the most famous section as it's also the intro part, so you can hear the guitar very clearly without any vocals.

Our first task is to simply get the chord shapes together, and we're going to be using all open chords here (with the F being a half barre, but hopefully you're already used to that). The chords in the A section are | Am | C | D | F | Am | E | Am | E |. Another key point to note is that we are playing in a 6/8 time signature, which is very common in blues and folk music. This is known as compound time and is based around a grouping on three feel (rather than 2 in standard time).

To work in 6/8 be sure to simply count "1 2 3 4 5 6" or even "1 2 3 2 2 3" with that accent on the 4th count. This will help you deliver the feel of the track perfectly.

So, let's take a look at those chord shapes:

The arpeggios

At this point it would make sense to start trying to work through the arpeggio feel of the track. An open chord arpeggio is to simply pick one note at a time, rather than strum the chord. However, this track's arpeggios at times can sit right in the grey area between strumming and arpeggiating. You'll get a feel for this as you gradually build up to the speed of the track, but for now, let's focus on the basic arpeggio ideas.

To demonstrate this, we'll simply take the first A minor chord and study how the arpeggio works:

There are a couple of themes to be aware of. The first is that you start each chord on the root note, whichever string that is on (you can see that in the chord diagrams above). The second element is that you generally then arpeggiate only the G, B and E strings after the root note. The third element is that with only one exception you play an open G string as the final note.

Finally, you may notice from the mini tab above, that some of the notes are played as 16th notes, and some as 8th notes. The 16th notes in this arpeggio really blur the line between arpeggios and strumming, as they are so fast. It feels like you are just doing a slow strum! Keep this in mind as you work through the whole progression.

The B section

Once you have a good feel for the A section, you're 90% of the way there. The B section is very similar. First up, let's just clarify the order of the sections and when to move into them. As I said above they simply rotate. We start with the intro to the song, which is just guitar. This is the A section. As soon as Eric Burdon starts singing, we're into the B section. You then roll through the whole B section and go straight back into the A section… And round and round it goes!

So, what is the B section? Well it has these chords: | Am | C | D | F | Am | C | E | E | Am | C | D | F | Am | E | - So very similar with subtle differences. The good news is that the chord shapes all remain exactly the same, and what you play on each chord remains exactly the same. So all you have to do is play what you already know, just in a very slightly different order.

A word on the theory…

If you're a beginner or improver, I wouldn't worry too much about this section as it may not be relevant to you… yet! However, for any intermediate or advanced players, I just want to briefly highlight a few core musical aspects that will help your own theory and songwriting. The song is in the key of A minor but certainly uses a little bit of modal interchange. This means that we are borrowing from other modes for many of the chords, which is a great trick to do. This diagram will help explain that:

As you can see, the D major and E major are all borrowed from other modes or scales. I would personally attribute the D major to the Dorian mode, as turning the IV chord to major is very common in Dorian. As for the E major, I would attribute this to either a secondary dominant idea, pulling the progression back to A minor, or a simple harmonic minor V chord. Both work well!

So there you have it! An absolutely essential tune in any guitar player's library, and a super fun song to play along to once you get that arpeggio technique nailed. Have fun with it, and share this lesson with your friends! Also don't forget to sign up to our Guitar Club completely free today if you haven't already. You'll get immediate access to a pathway of learning to suit your goals and your level. See you there for more lessons.