Guitar Theory - House Of The Rising Sun Chords

In this exercise, we practice House Of The Rising Sun chords

AA,CC,DD,FF,AA,E7E7

Repeat thru song.

The E7 chord is made by making a normal E major chord, and then lifting the ring finger, or “sus” meaning suspended or lifted finger.

This lowers the E note octave on the D string down 2 half steps to a Minor 7 sound on the Open D string

Other than the E7, which is easy, the rest of the chords are straight forward open chords in the 1st hand position.

For an eagle eye view, and to get a sense of why we do things in the sequence we do them,

If you were to go to any guitar teacher, they may try to show you how to play these kinds of chords on day 1 of your lessons,

before you have even had a chance to figure out how to fret even 1 note, they are trying to make you fret 3 notes!

And what makes it worse is, its the farthest away hand position, so you have to reach, and your shoulder gets tired quick,

Then the frets are spread out farther at that end of the fretboard, making fingering some chords or reaching some notes tricky,

And the first hand position is also where its hardest to fret the strings, because the nut action.

The first hand position is the worst hand position, and yet thats exactly where they start every guitar student.

So these lessons are planned so that you start on the 12th fret, which is where the frets are spaced nicely, your eye can see clearly, the action is easiest, and your shoulder isn’t exhausted after a few minutes practice.

So we start at the 12th hand position and work our way down to the 1st hand position,

and then work our way back up from the 1st hand position back to the 12th hand position.

This song, House of the Rising Sun, is a very important blues standard, perhaps the standard of all standards...

Its so old that nobody knows who wrote it, and its also in the public domain, so you can cover it.

This song is the perfect teaching tool, because you can start very simple, and keep building on this song, re-inventing it every time you play it.

This song is also the doorway to the Minor Pentatonic, which is the doorway to the Blues, and Rock and Roll, and Metal music.

So if you are a student of music, and you are digging deep to find the roots of the music you love, this song is what you have been looking for!