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Yesterday

by The Beatles • Lesson #242 • Jun 8, 2019

Full video lesson

Print-Friendly Song Sheet 6 pages

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Editor’s notes

Hey friends! Here’s my full lesson for Yesterday by The Beatles. I’ll teach you how to play it in standard tuning (the Beatles tune down 1 whole step), showing you two different fingerstyle approaches you can use to get the job done. One of them is more in the style of The Beatles (17:27), while the other uses the same chords & notes, but uses a more spacious fingerpicking pattern – which I prefer when playing it (28:01). Otherwise, I’ll start with the chord shapes, explain some ways to simplify some of the difficult transitions, and go over the general chord progression basics. In the end, you’ll have everything you need to play this song - whether you want to imitate the Beatles style, or do something more straightforward & strummy.

Timestamps for my full lesson:

  • 0:00 Lesson preview & greeting
  • 1:12 Tuning: standard vs. whole step down?
  • 1:40 How to play the chords
  • 6:49 Simplifying the F#m and B7
  • 10:14 Chord progression basics
  • 14:35 Strumming vs. fingerpicking?
  • 17:27 Fingerpicking tab (var. 1 of 2)
  • 28:01 Fingerpicking tab (var. 2 of 2)
  • 30:02 Advanced chorus walk-down
  • 32:15 Farewell

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