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Romeo and Juliet

by Dire Straits • Lesson #284 • Feb 12, 2020

Hey there friends! Here’s my lesson for the Dire Straits song “Romeo & Juliet”. I’ll be showing you an “easy” way to pick up your guitar and play this song, specifically (1) using no capo, (2) in standard tuning, and (3) using a simplified version of the intro. All this together allows you to quickly jump into the song, hopefully keeping things accessible. As per normal, I’ll explain the chord shapes, the verse & chorus progressions, talk about strumming, and then break down the intro riff step-by-step.

Best of luck with things! Again, keep on reading for additional notes on how to play this 100% exactly like Dire Straits does. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this lesson and the PDF chord sheet I’ve made for this song.

  • 0:00 Greeting & overview
  • 1:42 Capo & tuning notes
  • 3:00 Chord shapes needed
  • 4:18 Chord progressions & strumming
  • 11:17 Playthrough of verse & chorus
  • 13:12 Intro tab, step by step
  • 21:41 Farewell

Licensed Song Sheet 3 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.

On the fence? Here's a guide I made showing the purchase & print process, including answers to common questions about my song sheets.

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Tour of My Song Sheet

Here’s a tour of the song sheet I made for this song. It’s currently available for individual purchase over at Musicnotes (who provides licensing). The link to buy it is above. Ignore what I say in this video about Patreon – that is no longer the best place to support me with membership (instead, become a member on this site you’re reading now – here’s more info).

More About Capo and Tuning

My video lesson above is in standard tuning, no capo – which aims to give you an accessible way to play this song with any old guitar, no re-tuning or capo needed.

However, if you want to play along with Dire Straits, use the chords I show and put a capo on the 3rd fret. Any for extra credit even, you’ll want to tune your guitar to open G tuning (D G D G B D). Check out Justin Sandercoe’s lesson if you want to learn how to play it in open G:

Dire Straits Version

Here’s the official album version, if you’d like to hear exactly how Dire Straits plays it.

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