How to play: Safe & Sound by Taylor Swift feat. The Civil Wars
In this lesson, you’ll learn how to play the fingerpicking intro to ‘Safe & Sound’ by Taylor Swift ft. The Civil Wars.
This riff is played with a capo on the seventh fret, which is quite far up the fretboard. However, this does mean that the frets are smaller so we get the benefit of our open chords becoming less of a stretch.
There are a number of instances in this song where the first notes (of the Dm and Am chords) are played on an open string. This removes a bit of pressure while we’re changing chords as we are able to start fingerpicking the pattern for the next chord while we are still moving our fingers into position to play the chord. It’s always a good idea to try and recognise little opportunities like this when you’re learning a song.
This song also gives us the opportunity to practice keeping our thumb anchored in one position throughout the whole progression. As you’re practising moving through the chords, work to build dexterity in your left hand by keeping your thumb anchored in a good position throughout the changes.
Discover how to learn the notes in a way that not only develops your fretboard fluency but reinforces your overall musicianship.
A guitarist who has learned all the notes on the fretboard: Can more effectively learn scales and chords; Has a better understanding of keys, intervals, and scale degrees; Is able to more easily memorise songs; Has a greater capacity to understand music theory; Is more effectively able to develop their aural skills; Gets ‘lost’ far less frequently when they are improvising on the guitar.