Playing 'Tears in Heaven' on Guitar

Video Transcript

JOE WILES: We're looking at number 6 on our top 80 most downloaded guitar tabs on the Internet, and it's Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven." Let's take a look. Now we're only going to talk about the first two bars of the song in this segment, then we're going to discuss the other two bars in the next segment. But to start the song off, it's a great fingerpicking exercise. We hit the low E string with our thumb, hammer on to the 2nd fret of the low E string, then hit the A string open. Okay? Then we're going to pad the G and the B strings together with our second--with our index finger on the 2nd fret, okay? And then we're going to do a hammer-on on the B string to the 3rd fret and then release it. Okay? So it sounds like this. Try that again. Now, once you do that hammer and the pull-off and then the G string to end, I want you to start stretching your fingers up here to the 5th fret of the B string with your pinkie and your ring finger on the 4th fret of the G string, middle finger on the 4th fret of the low E string. We're going to hit all these together, all three strings, then bass note then the high notes, then we're going to slide it all the way down to the 2nd fret, all three notes, then hit them all together. That's the first bar of the song. It sounds like this. The second bar, we'll start with the same chord position. We're going to hit the low string, high, then low again, then we're going to release our middle finger to the open E. We're going to hit all three of those together again. Hit the low E, high, low. So the second bar of this song sounds like this. Together, the first and the second bars of the song sound like this. Again, it sounds like this. In the next segment, we're going to discuss bars three and four. I'll see you there.

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