Hi There,

In the last blog we looked how suspended chords work and how you can spice up your chord progressions by using them.

Now we can start using them to play a well known song – Free Fallin’, by Tom Petty.

The great thing about this song like Bob Dylan is it only uses a few chords the whole way through.

The 3 chords that are used are Fmaj, Fsus4 and Cadd11

(don’t think about the add11 and why it’s called that at the moment – we’ll come onto compound intervals at a later date)

So using the previous blog on suspended chords you can work out the notes of F major and Fsus4 and understand how they work:

F contains F, A and C

Fsus4 contains F, Bb and C (the Bb causing the suspended sound)

Here are the 3 chords below:

In terms of your right hand and the timing here is the verse timing:

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it below and explaining the timing:

TOM PETTY VERSE AUDIO

Now in the chorus’s they play something like this – this is a great strumming pattern as it uses a mixture of quavers, crotchets and semi-quavers:

Here’s an audio clip of me explaining how to play it for those not too comfortable with sight reading!

TOM PETTY CHORUS

Have fun and thanks for reading and listening.

ROCK N ROLL

You can find regular guitar tips on twitter @jsmusicschool

Many thanks

James