How to Play Wanted Dead or Alive on Guitar (Easy)

Hi, I'm Troy from Studio 33 Guitar, thanks for watching today, we're looking at a classic acoustic rock song Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi. This is a great song, it's a lot of fun to

play

and is immediately recognizable with that classic intro. The most difficult part of this song is probably the strumming pattern. There's a lot going on there, so I'm going to break it down and simplify it so that even if you're a beginner, you can

play

as usual. I will have the Chord Chart in pdf available on our website studio33

guitar

.com. You can go there, find the chord chart, print it out and then you can follow along.

It'll make things a little easier for you, but for now, let's get down to business, take a look at how to play Wanted Dead or Alive. Let's start with the intro riff. I'll play it once and then I'll break it down and show you how it's done, so it'll probably sound a lot harder to play. Actually, let's break it down and take a look, we're going to start up here on the 14th fret of the G string with our middle finger and then we're going to jump two strings down with our index finger on the 13th fret.

We're not going to play that string if in the middle, you'll have to skip that, but we're going to play this open D string throughout each of these sequences. It's what's called a pedal tone, that note will be D. buzzing and playing each of these different chords that we're playing, so the first one we start with that open D string and then we play the 14th fret with our middle finger and then the 13th fret with our index finger and then we go back to the 14th, like this that we have this and that's the same strumming pattern or pick pattern that we're going to use for all these different shapes along the neck, so the first one is on the 14th fret and the 13th after we play it, so we're going to move this down, our middle finger is going to go on the 12th fret and now we're going to use our ring finger on that E string on the 12th fret and then we have this that opens up the D 12th and then the high 12th. and then we go back to the 12th again to have this, then we're going to take the same pattern and move it down two frets to the 10th and now we're going to slide our middle finger down one fret and we're going to go back to using our index finger again on the eighth fret and now we're going to take a big jump and we're going to slide down to the fifth fret and we're going to play with our middle finger and our ring finger like this and now we're going to slide down one more fret and we're going to go back to using our index finger again , so it's going to go like this until now we have this starting here at the 14th to the twelfth to the nineteenth and eight five and five and then four and three on this last one we're going to play this middle finger note again, we're going to slide it to the second fret and we're going to take our index finger Back there now it's going to be on the first fret where we're going to play those two notes together, so we want to try to use our middle finger to place it on that B string so that it doesn't ring and we can strum and you get both notes without play the string if, so the last bit will sound like this, so that's the whole sequence and then we repeat it exactly the same way and then we have this cool little riff that happens, it sounds like this and That's with the open string and play it twice and then go to this third fret, the C note and then give it a little bit of curvature so that it's like this and then to the open D string and then to the third fret. on the d string with a little bend, so together we have this, after playing that open d string, you go to a d chord shape like this, but we're going to leave our middle finger out so it gives us what's called a d2 chord and We're going to arpeggiate these strings in reverse order, so we're going to start with the highest string and work our way down through these top three strings and then repeat that so it's like this, you're going to play that. riff three times now, after the third time you'll go to an f chord and that will sound like this now the f chord might have looked a little funny, it's a tricky f that I like to use sometimes, in fact I have a video that talks about a bunch of different ways you can play an F chord that's a little bit simpler, the full F chord of course would be a bar chord like this and that can be a little tricky to play, so that the F chord I just made is exactly the same as an E major chord, except I'm sliding these fingers up one fret and then I just play these three strings that my fingers are on and that gives me a chord of F and the reason I like that one for this song is because this index finger stays in the same position as for that D chord, so it makes it an

easy

F chord to play instead of having to change to this full F bar chord, you're already in this d position, so in order.

To play that f chord, all you have to do is leave your index finger where it is, move your middle finger up to the third fret and your ring finger directly below it and then play just those three strings and later in this song that f chord will be played again and you can play it the same way if you want, you can play that whole bar chord or you can play a couple of different ways of playing an f chord, but I find one is

easy

and it's a pretty good timing. quick that the chord comes in so you can get away with that cheat chord and no one will notice, so after playing that long intro and then playing that little riff three times, we end up back on this D chord and here is where the verse starts as I mentioned in At first, the strumming pattern of this song is a little complicated because there's a lot going on in the original and it sounds like this, so let's take a look at a simplified version of that, break it down and then It's going to expand and make it a little bit closer to the original, so first it's important to know how long we're going to stay on each chord, so we're going to start with a D chord and we're going to play it for a full measure, so that's it.

We're going to count to four. , so it'll be one, two, three, four, so for now let's just work on all the down strums and don't worry about any of the fancy stuff, so it'll be four down strums for that D chord and then I'll go to go to a c chord add 9 and if you've seen some of my other videos you'll have seen that I use this chord a lot, it looks very similar to a g chord, we have our middle finger on the third fret index finger. on the second fret below that and then our ring finger and pinky finger connected up here and we're going to play that C chord for two beats, so it's going to be two strums down, one two and then we're going to go to G. chord for two strums plus three four so for the G chord of that C add nine we are simply moving our middle and index finger up one string, we leave the ring finger and pinky locked in that position, so with the chord of D that's going to sound like this, so we're going to go back to the C chord and the G chord again, just like we just did two beats on each, two, three, four, now we're going to go to an F chord, which we can use that trick f like I just showed you or you can go to a full F chord or whatever variation you want, you'll play it for two beats and then go back to D so that everything together sounds like this: one two three four one two three four and that's the whole sequence and we play that whole sequence twice for the verse after we play it we go to the chorus and the chorus is the same as the last part of the verse so we have that chord from c two beats to g and then to f d two beats in each one and at the end of the chorus of the original song you would go back to that intro piece again with the different shapes moving up the neck and then you would go back to verse two, which would be exactly the same as verse one and then the chorus again, so that would be the full song.

Now let's look at the strumming pattern that will sound a little more interesting and a little closer to the original. Much of the movement occurs in this one. d chord so for that we start with a normal d chord and then we're going to add our pinky and we're going to take it off and then we're going to take our middle finger off and we're going to put it back in so we have these kind of trills that we can do before I was saying we play this chord from d counting to four one two three four and that would be if we count the quarter notes now these little difficult notes that our fingers are playing are actually happening on the sixteenth notes a we would count sixteenth notes, we would count one e and uh two e and uh three e and uh four e and a now , when we play these little fills with our fingers, we won't count all those sixteenth notes, we'll leave some of them out, so we'll count one, two and three and four one two and, if we split it into two sections, the first half would just be the chord of d down down down up down down down up for the second half of that we're just tapping down up and we're going to move these fingers on each of them so the first one is going to be pinky down and we're going to play it up. down, strumming down.

We're going to take it off and we're going to play it up, we're going to take the middle finger off, we're going to play another one down and then we're going to put the middle finger back for the up, up, down, up, down strum, up, so together it would sound like this and at higher speed it would sound like this, so it's a little tricky and will take some time, but start slow and work your way up to it. Next, we're going to go to this C chord and the G chord and We're going to stop a little bit between the C and the G, which is going to sound like this, so for that we're going to play a tone lower and then we're going to put our hand down and mute all the strings. like this and then immediately to the G chord, then you're going to add another one down up on the G, so it would be like this down and then when we go to the F chord, we'll do the same thing with that stop it would be like this, but we're just strumming downwards because we're just playing that trick f, so we don't want to get the high strings with an upstroke, so together that part would sound like this and go from there. f to d chord, so that's the whole song.

I hope you found it useful again. Go to the website, get that pdf and print it. It will be a little easier to follow. Also make sure to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel for more videos thanks for watching, see you next time