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Learnin' To Fly
by Tom Petty • Lesson #108 • Nov 25, 2017
Video lesson
Print-Friendly Song Sheet 2 pages
Follow along with my print-friendly guide for this song! It’s available for purchase at Musicnotes.com, the web’s leading provider of licensed sheet music.
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Buy at Musicnotes.comEditor’s notes
In this lesson, I’ll teach you how to play “Learnin’ to Fly” by Tom Petty – complete with chords, tabs, strumming pattern, and rhythm tips. This entire song only uses 4 chords, in the same order, the entire time – so it’s quite easy to get started with! And if you want to take it a step further, there’s good opportunity to add some flourish notes to spice things up. Here’s what’s in the video:
Video timestamps:
- 0:00 Playthrough
- 0:39 Greeting
- 1:47 Chords needed
- 3:43 Timing & strum pattern
- 5:11 Adding flourish notes
- 8:10 Farewell
Chords needed
The entire song uses these 4 chords, in this order, repeating. The pinky on the high E-string (for all chords) isn’t required for the C and Am, but it helps keep the sound consistent. Play whatever version of F you prefer – I like this one (or a 3-string version on the D/G/B strings) because they work well with the flourish-note riff I show below.
E –––3––– ––––3––– –––3––– –––3–––
B –––1––– ––––1––– –––1––– –––0–––
G –––2––– ––––0––– –––2––– –––0–––
D –––3––– ––––2––– –––2––– –––0–––
A ––––––– ––––3––– –––0––– –––2–––
E ––––––– –––––––– ––––––– –––3–––
F C Am G
Strumming and timing
An easy way to play this is using all down-strums. As such, divide up each chord as follows – and accent the first strum of each chord.
F C Am G
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
> > > >
The same diagram but with counting instead of generic dots (for each eighth note), is as follows:
F C Am G
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
> > > >
Adding flourish note to your strumming
While doing your regular strumming, try to add/remove the notes shown below. See my video for reference.
See my sheet music for the tabs.
Lyrics w/ chords
See my sheet music for the lyrics with chords.
Good luck!
Let me know if you have questions. I hope this was helpful.
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Hey there! My name is David Potsiadlo, and I'm the creator of the 400+ weekly lessons here at Song Notes, going back to 2013. Here’s my guitar story »
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