Body Like A Back Road Guitar Lesson - 6 Minutes Long
Body Like A Back Road Guitar Lesson
This post is a guitar lesson on how to play Body Like A Back Road, by Sam Hunt, on guitar.
I've rated this tutorial to be at about a 5/10 difficulty rating due to the barre chords. I suggest that you have around 10-15 songs under your belt (and a little bit of experience with barre chords too) before you start learning this song.
I'll be showing you a fairly close transcription of how to play Body Like A Back Road, and it's best played on electric guitar.
What skills are required? What are the benefits to learning Body Like A Back Road?
To play this song, you must be familiar with barre chords. If you're not familiar with them yet, I have one recommendation: Don't attempt learning them until you have about 10-15 songs under your belt and are super bored with all open chords.
Highly recommended: Download a copy for yourself
Although streaming services out there probably already pay Sam Hunt a pretty penny for plays of his song, I can't tell you how much it means to artists when people actually pay for their music. Please consider shelling out the (very small amount of) money for a copy, which you can then use in Capo and slow the song down.
Getting familiar with and approaching Body Like A Back Road
The biggest lesson I learned in grad school, aka when I practiced literally 6-8 hours per day, is learning music was easy if I listened to the piece a lot before attempting it. In other words, if I was familiar with the song, it came easier.
I'm sure you already know Body Like A Back Road, but just to be sure, listen to the song and pay extra-close attention to the rhythm guitar part. That's what we'll be learning.
Approaching Body Like A Back Road
After getting familiar with the song, it's time to jump into the guitar part. We'll do the chords first then the strumming. Here's where you can find all these chunks on the YouTube video, (posted below for your convenience):
Chords - 1:11
Strumming - 3:28
Troubleshooting Fade Into You
"The C#min and the B chords are hard to play. What up with that?"
These two chords are barre chords. If you don't know about barre chords and want to get a start, I'd recommend checking this book out (but then again I'm biased!)
"I've got the down strums, but my pick gets stuck on the up strum. How do I fix that?"
This is an easy fix. When you do a down strum, your pick's strumming edge is angled upwards. Angle it the opposite way for the up strum and you'll never get stuck again.
"That B chord is a really crappy chord. Any suggestions to get around that?"
I get it. The B chord is not fun to play. I've found major barre chords that have the A string as their root to be super dissatisfying to play. You could play all the chords on the E string, like with 6 string barre chords, but it's not very efficient.
I'm so sorry! This is one of those times you just need to grin and bear it.
"This song goes so fast. How do I slow it down?"
It's not as hard as you might think. My suggestion is to apply a specific workflow, one of my personal favorites: Capo 10. This workflow will show you how to practice along with the song without getting behind.
"How will I know if I've mastered this song?"
When you play along with the recording, you've got this song. Congrats!
"How did you get that sound?"
The Line 6 Pocket Pod. I love this little processor!