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If you want more fun, relaxation and creativity in your life, you'll enjoy our guitar courses. As you progress along your guitar journey, come back to these Sweet Home Alabama chords and see what new things you pick out. We share ninja tips (for instant fun!) but also timeless fundamentals that will deepen your understanding. If we are leaning in too hard on a string with our fingers, we may end up muting other strings that we need.
Practicing new chords in this way helps us determine which chords sound good with other chords, and which chords dont. Its also develops your chord vocabulary which makes you more articulate as a musician. Power chords can be swapped out in almost any instance to add a bit more rock flairto a song we already know. This is great practice for mastering the sound of a song in different ways. The melody of the song out loud, and that’s different than just playing chords on a guitar. Beautiful, but they also help us check our hand position to ensure that we aren’t muting any necessary strings.
Playing Sweet Home Alabama Chords, Step-by-Step
Some songs are created with three or more different musical sections, chock-full of different chords that are all theoretically woven together. We highly recommend buying music from Hal Leonard or a reputable online sheet music store. We can try playing this progression with just two C chords back-to-back, but it just doesnt sound the same. Ear training is powerful, but it is one of the most overlooked pieces of musical training by most guitarists. Instead, we are more or less locked into this pattern of D major – Cadd9 – G major for the entirety of the song! The Sweet Home Alabama chords loop around for most of the song.

In one part of the song, and only once, a wild F chord appears. We’ve given you the layout of the section with the chords and lyrics below. Chordu.com needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding. D C G Big wheels keep on turning,D C G carry me home to see my kinD C G singing songs about the southland.D C G I miss ole bamy once again and I think it's a sin. A great way to practice letting strings ring out is to play arpeggios.
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If you are hoping to learn this song, you’re in the right place. Below we have given you a full guide along with the video tutorial to help you learn this song. Modal interchange is when you combine notes and chords from two parallel scales. The most popular type of modal interchange involves mixing the two most popular major modes, Ionian and Mixolydian. In the case of Sweet Home Alabama, if youre thinking G major scale, you would mix G major with G Mixolydian.

One of the things that makes up for the simplicity in these Sweet Home Alabama chords is the riff that is played over top of those chords. This song revolves around three primary chords D major, Cadd9 and G major. Learn how everything fits together quickly, easily and effectively. We share ninja tips but also timeless fundamentals that will deepen your understanding.
Track: Guitare 1 - Electric Guitar (clean)Difficulty (Rhythm):Last edit on:10/18/2011
Take the time to give your ears the training they need to keep up with your hands. We'll send you a series of lessons that will move you to the next level of your guitar journey. You want to make sure that you pick each of these strings separately, but allow them to ring out altogether.
This F chord serves as a transition back to the C chord, which then transitions us back to D major. For one fleeting moment, we have to contend with a chord that isn’t as easy as the other Sweet Home Alabama chords on this list. Practice your arpeggios if you really want to harness the melodic elements of the Sweet Home Alabama chords as they’re presented on the original recording. Some songs stick to two distinct sections to make the song stand out. Start by strumming the lowest note in each of the chords below to bring out the bass element.
The most popular way is to use the basic chords of A, D, and E. There are many different websites that offer free guitar tabs for Sweet Home Alabama, so you should have no trouble finding the right one for you. If you really want to rock out with this track, you can use power chords to beef up this song and forego the riff altogether. The chord only pops up briefly and it may not make much sense to play it but when you play the full song you will see that it does. The F chord is actually the transition back to the C chord which then leads you back into D major. If youre an absolute beginner and this is one of the first songs youre learning, weve stripped down the chords for you to make it easier.
If you’re an absolute beginner and this is one of the first songs you’re learning, we’ve stripped down the chords for you to make it easier. The chords for Sweet Home Alabama are nice and simple but it’s the riff that adds a more complicated riff to the song. The main riff is actually simple enough if you follow the guide we’ve set out below.
There are three main chords you will need to know to play this song – D major, Cadd9 and G major. All of these Sweet Home Alabama chords can be played without really having to change your hand position. If you’re a complete beginner then we have the chords stripped down for you below to make them easier to play.

F Major – Index finger goes on the first fret of the B second string. Middle finger goes on the second fret of the G third string. Your ring finger sits on the third fret of the D fourth string. G Major – Index finger on the third fret of the E first string. Middle finger goes on the fourth fret of the G third string. Cadd9 – Index finger goes on the second fret of the fourth D string.
All of these strings should be played separately but you can allow them to sing out together to make the main melody. Letting strings ring out is all about your hand positioning. If you lean too hard onto the strings with your fingers then you can end up muting the other strings which you need. A great way to practice this technique is to play some arpeggios.
Put all the chords together, and you get four major chords, G, C, D, and F. In music theory, you would say youre borrowing the F chord from a parallel scale. Lynyrd Skynyrd used this same composition technique in the song Free Bird. Each chord is accompanied by a riff of some kind by the lead guitarist that accentuates what is already happening in the song.
Sweet Home Alabama Guitar Tab
In the video below, ChordBuddy creator, Travis Perry, shows the step-by-step directions for playing the song’s opening chords. Although this video doesn’t show how to play the whole song, it does show you how to play a majority of the song. The great thing about the song structure of Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd is that the entire song uses the pattern D major, Cadd9 and G major. There are no complicated chord changes or anything to confuse you.