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Sweet Caroline

by Neil Diamond • Lesson #15 • Dec 20, 2013

Hello, my friends! Here’s a lesson teaching you how to play Neil Diamond’s classic Sweet Caroline. This will be a capo 2 arrangement, allowing you to play along with Diamond’s album version using chords in the family of A major. My lesson features plenty of licks, fills, and riffs you can use to spice things up — which I demonstrate in my tutorial! An intro riff is also included, which lets you capture the melodic sound of the horns with your guitar.

Licensed Song Sheet 6 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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Play-Along Cover (Lesson #286)

If you’d like to see a beginning-to-end playthrough (recorded a bit more recently), here you go! This shows the lyrics and chords on screen for your reference.

Melody Deep-Dive (Lesson #530)

More recently (2023) I recorded a melody deep-dive of Sweet Caroline, looking at the exact notes Neil Diamond sings throughout. If you’re interested on learning this to help your singing – or, if you’re interested in working on your major scale fluency for lead guitar training – this one is for you! The video is below, and be sure to view all my lesson notes if you’re interested in getting into this one.

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