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While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Fingerstyle Guitar Lesson)

The Beatles

SONG DETAILS

DIFFICULTY:

4

TUNING:

Standard

TEMPO:

110 BPM

KEY:

A minor

This is the full fingerstyle guitar lesson for While Why Guitar Gently Weeps by The Beatles.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps was written by George Harrison in 1968 and appears on The Beatles iconic album ‘White Album’.

Harrison invited fellow guitarist Eric Clapton along to the session during the recording of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and the overdubbed guitar solos you hear on the track were all played by him.

We’re going to learn a full fingerstyle arrangement of While My Guitar Gently Weeps in this lesson. This means that for the entire piece we’re going to be playing the chords, melody and the bass notes all at the same time. You may find it a little tricky at times as there’s so much going on. Hopefully you’ll get a lot out of this lesson.

Learn To Play While My Guitar Gently Weeps

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Performance)

As you learn to play this fingerstyle arrangement of While My guitar Gently Weeps, be sure to frequently return to the performance as a good reference point and guide.

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The Intro Lesson for While My Guitar Gently Weeps

For the intro I’ve added the piano line you can hear on the song over the descending bass notes. I recommend starting by isolating the two individual parts (bass/piano line), practising them both separately and then bringing them together.

If you want the lyrics of While My Guitar Gently Weeps and just the chords in their most basic form, then you can find them here.

How to Play the Verse 

Throughout the verse we’re playing the descending bass line again, with the melody of the lyrics. At the same time we’re also adding in some arpeggiated notes from within each chord.  Remember that when doing a fingerstyle arrangement of any song you want to think of the guitar as a band, not just one single instrument.

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How to Play the Chorus of While My Guitar Gently Weeps

The interesting part about the chorus and what gives it the strong lift is the key change. Here it goes from the key of A minor to its parallel key of A major, this is pretty typical of The Beatles and a mark of their truly outstanding songwriting skills.

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How to Play the Instrumental Section of While My Guitar Gently Weeps

There’s just the instrumental section to learn now. I put my own little spin on this part so feel free to add your own if you want to.

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