"Learning to fly" is a song by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, from their album "Into the great wide open". The song was written by Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne.
This song has a fairly simple layout and hence lends itself to being an excellent tune to learn for beginners, and is also a great song into the bargain ! The lesson wont be as detailed as that for knocking on heavens door because you can simply try the same things out with this song that were suggested in that lesson.
To make things a bit more interesting, we’ll look at playing the song in two different keys. Each will introduce a new chord to the vocabulary, while one key is harder to play than the other.
If you have a copy of the song you will notice that one chord progression is repeated throughout the whole of the song, so there is not too much to remember when you play it ! The only part that differs from this is just before the start of the first solo section, where the last chord in the sequence is held before the solo for an extra two bars (count of 8), this happens twice in the song.
The first key we will learn the song in, is G Major, for this you’ll need these chords:
In this key the chord sequence is as follows:
|
C 2 G 4 |
Em 2 D 4 |
The only new chord here from knocking on heavens door is Em, which is very easy to play and you should not have a problem with picking it up.
As before, start with downstrums only for each count, starting out slowly at first and then building up the speed as your chord changes get better.
From here, its quite simple to go straight to a rhythm pattern that fits well with this song, by adding in a few up strums. Try the following, where a chord in brackets denotes that it is to be played as an up stroke.
|
C & 2 (G) & 4 |
Em & 2 (D) & 4 |
Well that’s about it. The only other part is the solo. During the first solo section the strumming changes a little (gets wilder), but the timing is the same. In this key, it is the D chord that is held for an extra two bars.
So as usual, play around with different rhythms and note picking to see what you can come up with.
The second key to try it in is C major, which is the key that is used on the recorded version, heres the chords:
If you can handle the chords, try playing along with the record, it should be easy enough and will sound good as long as your guitar is in tune ! In this key the chords are as follows:
|
F 2 C 4 |
Am 2 G 4 |
So you can see that this has the dreaded F major chord in it. If this is the first time you’ve tried to play F, its going to be very hard. It took me a few months to get the hang of it !!! Now its up to you whether you go for a partial or full bar F major. It might be sensible to try a partial bar F major at first. Personally I use a partial bar when playing this, but in the end you’ll learn both versions anyway, if you want to take things further.
If you find this a bit difficult, you can always leave it for the moment and come back to it later, but the sooner you master F major, the better. Its sort of the first big milestone you reach in guitar playing and if you can master it, your well on your way to learning alot more.
Its a good idea to try the chord exercises when learning F major. Spend a few minutes in particular on trying this chord each time you practice, because its hard enough that you’ll need to. It seems nearly impossible when you first try, but you’ll get it in the end and practice is the only way.
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