How to play Help! - The Beatles

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We are going to take a look at another great Beatles song in this video lesson with a step-by-step guitar lesson on how to play Help!

It will probably only take you a few minutes to get this one down, however there is one tricky part that you may need to practice a little bit.

"Help!" was written by John Lennon as a response to the massive fame he had to deal with during Beatlemania. Even towards the end of his life he still stated that it was one of his favorite Beatles' songs. A very honest portrayal of what he was going through at the time, wrapped inside a killer pop song.

"Help!" starts out with the chorus, which contains three simple chords and a descending single note guitar riff overdub. In the video lesson I demonstrate not only how to play those chords the way they were recorded, but also how to play them in a way that enables you to play the descending bass guitar riff at the same time. With just one guitar you will be able to sound very close to the original recording.

The trickiest part of the song is next with the little arpeggiated guitar riff that always leads into the verse. It moves quite fast and the picking hand is gonna have quite a bit of work to do to keep up.

Pay attention to the picking pattern that I demonstrate here. That picking pattern will be repeated 4 times and enables you to play through the entire sequence as economically as possible. You will always be picking in the direction of the next string you are going to hit and that is the key.

After that cool and challenging guitar lick, we make it to the verse. The verse section has a lot more chords to memorize than the chorus, but they are still pretty simple.

If you can comfortable play barre chords you will have no problem mastering the verse and chorus chords. If you have trouble playing barre chords, what better place to learn that with a great Beatles tune!

I would put the difficulty level at around upper beginner for this song. Obviously, if you are a complete beginner, everything thing in "Help!" will challenge you. But if you have been playing for a few months and know your basic open chords and barre chord shapes, you should be able to nail this song in minutes. Enjoy! :)

Carl...