House of the Rising Sun by The Animals Tutorial/Lesson
House of the Rising Sun
Am, C, D, F, E, E7, Dm
Download Printable Guitar Guide
Unlock with Patreon
Watch play along cover
Unlock with Patreon
Are you new to playing the guitar? Watch my free Beginner Series where I show you all of the basics. You'll be playing your first songs in minutes!
Video transcript
hi my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play House of the Rising Sun by The Animals on the guitar here's a quick overview of everything I'll be covering in this tutorial today and with that being said let's go ahead and get started alright guys so we only have seven chord shapes you need to know to play for this song and we're going to start with our a minor which looks like this and sounds like this and by the way if you don't know how to read these chord charts you're seeing on screen I Do cover how to do that in my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out the next chord you need to know is our C major chord good chord after that we have our F major chord we also have our e major chord E7 chord and the last chord you need to know is our D minor chord foreign so if any of these chord shakes are new to you make sure to pause the video and just take a few minutes to memorize them as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you and if transitioning between chords fast enough is something that you're struggling with I would recommend checking out my practice with me Series where we build that skill together in real time but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into these strumming patterns now the first thing I always recommend for beginners is to go ahead and pull up the song and sing through the whole thing with a single down strum on your guitar wherever you see those chord changes it's really going to be helpful to know where those chord changes are going to be like what word you're singing and things like that and it just helps you familiarize yourself with the song so here's a quick example of what that would look like there is a house in New Orleans they call Rising Sun all right so you basically just want to do that for the whole song and get really familiar with where those chords are going to be transitioning while you're singing um this is actually something you do right now if you head over to my patreon page I do have a downloadable guide that you can print out and just help you with this process so make sure to check that out I'll link it in the description box below but um once you've done the practice pattern we can go ahead and talk about more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so a super simple strumming pattern that you can apply for the entire song as you can see is down up down up so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk a little bit more about this Rhythm all right guys so we're going to count this strumming pattern in a 6 8 Rhythm so basically you can think of that as like one two three four five six or you could count it like one and a two and whichever one makes more sense in your head but basically lined up with that the strumming pattern is going to sound like this one two three four five six one two three four five six one two three four five six down down up down up all right super simple and all you want to do is play this pattern through one time for every chord except for our E7 chord we are going to repeat the strumming pattern twice for that chord only one of the best things about this song is that it's super repetitive in the way that the chords are structured so if we go through one verse you can play it through for all the other verses so let's go ahead and look at verse one and go through an example the house and they would just keep going so like I was saying earlier this whole song is super repetitive so what you see in the red box right now that's going to be repeated after each verse so basically this song is going to go first and then those same little block of chords another verse another block of those chords over and over again and so it's really easy to get under your belt after you can get through one verse you can basically get through the whole song okay um so basically yeah this strumming pattern can be applied for the entire song you would play it one time through for every chord except for E7 where you repeat it one little thing that I will add is sometimes I like to dress it up when I'm really getting into this song I will just play every single beat in this strumming pattern so instead of down up down up I'll go down up down up all right and it really leads into the next section of the song really well so for example one of the places I like to use this in this song is the very last E major chord in that little group of break chords okay so we have a minor Z okay a minor and we're going into the solo so one two three four five six all right so you can hear how it kind of just really builds up and leads into the next section really well so that's totally optional but that's something that I do like to do kind of at the ends of breaks right before the solo I like to do it a lot in the outro as well and you'll see all of this through in the playthrough so this is the strumming pattern I would recommend for basically the entire song it sounds pretty good with the whole thing so make sure to pause the video and just take a few minutes to memorize it and internalize that pattern and that Rhythm before moving on however if you are a little more familiar with the song you will hear that there's kind of a picking pattern that they kind of played in the original version so I definitely wanted to show you guys how to do that as well so after you come back we can go ahead and talk about the faking wait did you know you could send me a video if you need help that's right that's just one of the things that I offer through my patreon page so really quick before we continue I wanted to take a second to kind of sponsor myself in this video if you're somebody who's struggling with anything from chords or transitions or Rhythm bar chords anything like that you can send me a video of whatever you're struggling with and asking me any questions that you have and I will send you a video response back that's just one of the perks that I offer in addition to things like printable guitar guides customizable backing tracks you can vote on what kind of songs you want to see on my channel and things like that those are all exclusives that I offer my patrons on my patreon page so if you are interested it's a really great way to support the channel and help me continue making videos just like this one while also getting your hands on some really fun exclusive perks that can help you learn your guitar faster so I will make sure to link all of that in the description box down below if you're interested but with that being said let's go ahead and talk about the picking alright guys so as you can see I have a tab listed on the top half of the screen so if you don't know how to read tabs go ahead and check out this video I made it's a fun little video on how to read guitar tab so go ahead and get the basics there and then you can come back and finish out this video with me but basically I am presenting this as a tab or picking pattern but I actually in my head like to think of it more as strumming so this is going to be really useful for those of you who are maybe new to picking with your pick so basically let's go ahead and put our minor chord down remember that the rhythm is still going to be just like with strumming it's a 6 8 Rhythm so we have one two three four five six what I want you to do is on each of these tabs we're going to play the bass note of each chord so in a minor that's our open a string that's going to be all by itself on the first beat then between beats two and three you want to strum through the rest of the chord okay one two three and basically you're just doing a down strum like normal except you're kind of breaking it up and letting your pick hit each note individually one two three so by the third beat you should be down here and then for four five and six you just want to pick back up the string so you're going high E string B string G string all right on your left hand you're just holding down an A minor chord shape so we have one two three four five six all right and that pattern is how we're gonna play all of these chords so on our c chord our bass note is still that a string so it gets one two three four five six all right for B it's a little bit different we're gonna go to our D string one two three four five six f is also going to be a little different because we're starting on our low E string here and right so now you have more strings to strum through in those next two beads one two three four five six all right moving on with our E chord it's gonna be looking just like f one two three four five six E7 is the same one two three four five six and then D Minor is going to look like our D chord one two three four five six so if any of this counting is you know confusing you just make sure to listen to the song I think that it really helps if you know what the song sounds like um the reason I wanted to present it this way is because it's a lot easier I think instead of thinking about it as picking individual notes or individual strings it's easier just to think about it as strumming but like slowly right so we have one two three four five six one two three four five six one two three four five six and if you watch my right hand my pick hand all I'm doing is going down and then up almost as if I'm just like really slowing down that strumming foreign so basically that's how you would play through this with the picking I think it sounds good if you use it through the entire song in place of strumming or if you wanted to you could combine both the only part that's a little bit different is going to be that outro where we use the D minor chord so here it's just a minor c d f a minor e E A minor D minor and then you go back and forth between a minor and D Minor until the end of the song just like that and then you're going to end on a single a minor down strum all right so go ahead and pause the video and just take as much time as you need to practice through how we do this kind of picking slash slow strumming kind of tab here and then once you get back we can play through the whole song want to jam to the rest of this song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page where you can unlock access to this as well as all my other Fast Track and play along guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below if you like learning this song with me then you should definitely check out this video not only does it have a super similar Vibe but it's just as fun to play so I'll see you over there bye