Home ❯ Songs ❯ Turnpike Troubadours ❯

Diamonds & Gasoline

by Turnpike Troubadours • Lesson #290 • Mar 15, 2020

Practice Notes 4 pages

About this lesson

In today’s lesson I want to show you a fun strumming sequence which focuses on walk-downs between C, F, Am, and G chords. This one is inspired by the song Diamonds and Gasoline by the Turnpike Troubadours. While they play the song using fingerstyle, my strummed approach will still work should you want to practice the intro to this song.

0:00 Exercise at a glance
2:03 Riff 1 & 2, simple versions
8:06 Riff 1 & 2, with add’l strumming
11:38 Farewell

Update: in April 2025, I reformatted my practice notes (PDF) and also addded fingerstyle variations of each section of the chord progression. Note, I have not (yet) created a video lesson for the fingerstyle! If you’d like me to make this sooner than later, let me know.

If the technique of bass note strumming or walk-downs is new to you, check out the lessons below! They tackle the core techniques used in my main lesson (above).

Bass Note Strumming

★ Instructional PDF

Strummy Walkdowns in Key of C (Part 1)

★ Instructional PDF

The song that inspired this lesson

Here’s a video of the actual Turnpike Troubadours song that inspired this exercise. While I’m not teaching this song (or its fingerstyle riff) spot on, you can surely use what I’ve taught and get going with this tune, if that’s your goal.

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