Hey, what's up, everyone. It’s Aaron. The lesson I want to do for you right now is “Star Spangled Banner.” As you might know it’s the national anthem. I was at the basketball game from one of the high school last night. I was watching the play and during Star Spangled Banner I was thinking about teaching it. So what you’re going to have here if you are on Youtube, I recommend that you go to freeandeasyguitar.com up on the dropdown menu of top font of the Star Spangled Banner that’s what going to be listed under and once you’ll find that you’ll see all four set of tabs. I found four tabs that are varying in kind of from extremely easy to one that’s still pretty easy. It’s just to use up here and it uses pinky and kind of a scale formation type thing. So you know it’s up to you.
But the four tabs are done here. All four tabs are in standard tuning. They all kind are in different keys so you just pick the one you like the way it sounds the best to you. If you're just playing alone with nobody is singing then probably it won’t make much of a difference but we’ll get into this. The first one is the virgin one which is in the tab. It’s in standard tuning. The reason I have this one listed is because you can stay in the standard C chord. And basically use this kind of basic formation to get to every note in the song with the exception of a couple of notes here. You have to move your middle finger off of the D string on the second fret and move it down to the G string second fret.
Those are a few in there. All the notes are played on the high E, ready to play the open, first fret or third fret and you can choose your pointer finger to play the first fret notes and your pinky to play the third fret notes while keeping this ring finger here on the third fret of your A string the entire song. So, you don’t ever have to move it.
So basically, when the B string or your pointer finger is on the first fret and your C, if ever you’re playing a note on the third fret B string, use that pinky finger. So I’m going to play this real slow. I just pick out the tabs for these four versions. I’m going to try and walk you through it and you can use the tab to learn it. If there is anything different that is worth mentioning, I’ll tell you during the song but it starts out I like this.
[Demonstration]
That little thing, first thing on the C formation, I'm starting on the third string and I’m playing three, four, five, four, three, two. That’s on the C formation. The next little thing you’re going to do is you’re going to play the high string open, down the B string, third, first fret. So, hot pick the high E string open then the B string third fret, take your pinky off on first fret. So all together we have.
[Demonstration]
The next one you’re going to play is on a D string, second fret where the middle finger is and then stretch your pinky up here and play the note on fourth fret. The second and fourth, two four on the D string then right below that you’re going to play the G string open. And then you play the G string two more times open, high E. So, last you play the G string, two times open high E open three, one, zero on the B string.
So, starting from the very beginning it sounds like this.
[Demonstration]
Then right here the only thing you have to do is the next note you play is second fret note on the third string which is your G string you are going to have to take that middle finger off the second fret D, put on the single fret G just for this. You play that note, then it’s on the B string open, one, one, third string, fourth string, fifth string and you notice that your middle finger is back on the second fret.
Alright, that’s the first one. Basically, the rest of that tab you’ll see as version one tab. It’s self explanatory you figure it out. All the fingering and the position for fingers are basically just different variations that we just went over. So figure that one out. The second is a little bit different. You are going to have to learn this by yourselves in tabs. It’s all these tabs, at least there's no rule on special fingering as the way you get from note to note. If you are going from three, five, seven you can put on one finger. Play different the fingers that type of thing so these are really just tabs that you guys can teach your self and it’s good because these are easy songs. So, this a good way to teach your self how to re-tab these easy songs.
So the second version sounds like this, I’ll just try and play it for you real quick.
[Demonstration]
Alright, that’s version two, check that out with the tabs, version three I think it’s the easiest but I don’t like the way it sounds as much. So version three is even easier to teach yourself as far as tabs go. It sounds like this. I’ll play just the intro.
[Demonstration]
Skipping chord on the second part of it.
[Demonstration]
That’s the version three. You can check that out your self, teach it to your self on tabs. That’s going to be probably the easiest of the three, moving on the fourth one in standard tuning. It’s probably the most difficult of the four. There are many more difficult versions whether it’s Hendrick’s or Dave Navarro or Joe Satriani. There are tons and tons of versions of these that you can find but version four this one may look the most difficult but really what I want you to realize is the notes are all played between the seventh fret and the tenth fret.
So that’s four frets, seven, eight, nine, ten. What I wanted you to do at this one is you’re going to teach your self, if anything is on the seventh fret—I mean basically you can actually bar across everything on the seventh frets on your pointer finger and then you don’t have to worry about moving at it all. But that’s what I do when I play it, any notes from the eight fret use your middle finger. Any notes from the ninth fret use your ring finger and any notes from the tenth fret, use your pinky. So, that one is like that.
[Demonstration]
That will probably sound really good and it will left your guitars some distortion once you get into somebody hard parts this way.
[Demonstration]
That’s not the same version. So make it your own guys. This is one that I have four versions so they won’t take a whole lot of time explaining each one but I think these are really easy tabs for you and it’s basically just going to be your practice. If you practice this, you’ll be able to play it no time and hopefully some of you who are still on high school or in college can play this in a sporting event, have a video then post it so I can watch it. So, I hope you’re enjoying the site and take care, good luck.
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