Wagon Wheel by Darius Rucker Tutorial/Lesson
Wagon Wheel
G, D, Em, C
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
Hey everyone, my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Wagon Wheel by Darius Recker on the guitar. Today I am featuring my Zerger Zad8C guitar. So if you like what you see, I will leave more information about it down below in my description box. Here is 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. All right, guys. So to play through this entire song, you only need to know four different chord shapes. And we're going to start with our G major, 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 my free beginner course right here on YouTube. So, make sure to check that out right here. The next chord shape is our D major. We also have our E minor. And the last chord shape is our C major. And those are the only four chords you need to know to play through this entire song. All right, guys. So, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really memorize these chord shapes, as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them, cuz it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you. And if that's a skill you're currently struggling with transitioning back and forth fast enough, I do have a practice with me series right here on YouTube that you can check out. I will link it in the corner where we work on speeding up these chord transitions in real time together. So, make sure to check it out if you need it. Um, but once you have these chords under your belt, we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would recommend for this song. So, if you're somebody who's brand new to playing guitar, or you're somebody who struggles with playing guitar while singing at the same time, the first thing I would suggest doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and go through the entire thing with just a single downstrum on each chord change as you sing the song. And you want to take this time to really get used to what word or what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing. So, here's a quick example of what that would look like. Down south to the land of the pines, I'm Caroline. All right, so that's just a really quick example, but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song and just really make sure you know where those chords are going to be changing. And this actually something you do right now if you check out my Patreon page. I do have this entire guide available to download and print out. So I'll make sure to leave that in the description box. But once you've done this and you're comfortable with those chord changes, then we can go ahead and add to this to do more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song. All right, guys. So for my suggestion for strumming for this song, we're going to stick to a very beginner friendly pattern that you'll see used in a lot of songs. It's counted in an eighth note rhythm. So, it's going to sound like this. We have 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and four and down up down up down up. All right. Like I said, it's super common. So, if you can learn this strumming pattern, you'll be amazed how many different songs you can apply it to. And this song is a great example of how that would work. So, basically, what we would want to do is play this pattern through one time per chord throughout the entire song. So, taking a look at our first verse, this is a great example of the chord order that you'll see repeated throughout the song. You can see we're going to go from G to D to E minor to C. And then we're going to go from G to D to C for two measures. And for all of these chords, you're going to want to apply this strumming pattern one time. So, starting at the beginning here with our G chord, we've got down, down, up, down, up into our D chord. down, up, up, down, up into E minor into C. And then to finish out this little phrasing, we're going back to G. Down, up, up, down, up to D. And then this time straight into C chord for two measures. All right. And what we just played there is going to repeat throughout the entire song. So the whole thing is going to go G D E minor to C G to D to C twice. All right. Now, something we do want to do is we are going to have to speed it up just a little bit to get it more at the full tempo of the song. So, sped up more at full tempo would sound like this. And one thing you might be noticing with my rhythm is I am giving it more of a kind of bouncy kind of rhythm instead of it being very straight eighth notes. So now let's go ahead and add some singing in there so you can hear how it all comes together with our verse. We've got G D E minor C G C to the P. I'm on my way in the North Carolina staring out the road and pray God I see headlight. All right. So you would play it just like that for the verse and then like I said it applies for the entire song. So let's take a look at that chorus as well. The chord order, strumming, everything is exactly the same. So rock me like a wagon wheel. Rock me mama any way you feel. Hey m rock me. All right. So that's an example of both parts of the song. The song will just go back and forth between verses and choruses. Now, one thing I wanted to mention is if you wanted to kind of dress it up just a little bit, something you can do with the strumming is on that very first downstrum, instead of strumming your whole chord with all the strings, you could just pick the bass string or like the lowest note in that chord. So, for our G chord, that's going to be this low E string. If you pick it just by itself on that first beat and then finish out the rest of the strum, it kind of gives a little bit more of that feel of the original song. So, we've got same with our D chord. You would pick this open D string and then finish out the strums. All right. E minor is this low E string again. And then for your C major, it's this fifth A string. All right. Totally optional, but if you like the way that that sounds and it comes easy to you, then you can totally do that to dress it up just a bit. So, we've got G, D, E minor to C, G, D, C. All right. Like I said, totally optional, but a super fun way to dress that up as well. But anyways, that is how you can play the strumming for this entire song. All right, guys. So again, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get this strumming rhythm under your belt. Like I said at the beginning, this is a super common rhythm that you'll see applies to so many different songs. So if you're struggling with the coordination or speeding it up or anything like that, I do have a practice with me strumming series here on YouTube as well. So I will link the video that goes with this strumming pattern in the corner if you need it over there. We'll slowly speed it up together so that you can use it to play through all these different kinds of songs. But anyways, once you have the strumming and the chords and the transitions and everything down, then we can go ahead and put together everything we've learned in this tutorial today to play through the song. One, two, ready, go. Heading down south to the land of the pines. I'm coming my way. Want to have fun jam after 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 playalong guitar tutorials. I'll make sure to leave a link for that in the description box down below. If you enjoyed learning this song with me, then you should definitely check out this video. Not only does it have a super similar vibe and feel, but it's just as fun and easy to play. So, I'll see you over there.