JustinGuitar.com uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience. By continuing to use this site, you consent to the use of cookies. For more detailed information, please review the full Terms & Conditions.
Give Peace A Chance by John Lennon is a super simple guitar song. It's perfect if you're a beginner and want to develop your strumming technique and work on the D-A chord change.
There's scope for progression too - you can start with the real easy version and grow it as you work through the Beginner Grades. :)
Let's check it out!
This John Lennon classic alternates between the D chord and the A chord. With the D, it sounds cool if you hit string 5 as you strum. Usually we avoid it, but it gives a nice, full sound here.
When it comes to the A chord, you can play it the normal way, but I’m certain that John plays an open A7 chord on the original. To play an A7, all you need to do is lift off finger 1 from the standard open A grip.
🤔 Easier, Harder, Both? This A7 grip is both easier and harder than an open A chord! On one hand, you’ve got one less finger to worry about (no pun intended), but on the other hand, it’s easy to accidentally mute the G string. Give it a try and see what you think. :)
If you choose to play the A7, make sure your 2nd and 3rd fingers sit upright. If they're flat, you'll mute a string or two. It’ll still sound fine, but it's best to aim for a perfect chord. :)
The chord progressions for Give Peace A Chance are ultra simple. The intro is four bars of D, and the verse is eight bars of D! In the chorus, we play four bars of A, four of D, four of A, then four of D. Easy!
Watch out for the transition to the chorus. The chorus lyric starts on the last D chord in the verse, and we change to the chorus chords on “saying”.
If you watch the video of John Lennon playing Give Peace A Chance during the bed-in, you’ll see he’s playing D and A. But when you play along with the original, you’ll realize this doesn’t sound right.
His guitar is tuned down one tone in the video, meaning the chords are actually C and G (even though the grips are D and A!). So if you want to play along with the original track, swap D, A, and A7 for open C chord, open G chord, and open G7, in that order.
You can pretty much use any strumming pattern you know here! Just bear in mind that it’s a quick song. :)
If you’re a beginner guitar player, keep it super simple, strumming once per bar. Practice slowly if you need to, and make sure you change chords on time. The next level is to play four downstrums per bar, hitting the strings harder on beats 2 and 4 to add some groove. Think “soft, loud, soft, loud.”
If you’re going beyond the beginner guitar stage, you can try this bass-strum pattern. We pick the bass note on beats 1 and 3 and strum the whole chord on beats 2 and 4. It sounds wicked! Notice that the bass note is different for D and A - we hit string 4 over D and string 5 over A.
🚨 It's All About Rhythm: Feel is much more important than accuracy when it comes to this bass-strum pattern, especially for this song. It really doesn't matter if you hit the wrong string! Don’t stop strumming. :)
This bass-strum pattern might be difficult if you’re not used to picking out individual strings, but it’s good practice. This is a super-common pattern found in loads of styles and is great for technique development.
Have tons of fun with this John Lennon classic!
Check out the original
The Ultimate Bundle is BACK! You've been asking for it, and we've delivered! Save hundreds of dollars and get the most insane deal with our JustinGuitar Ultimate Bundle, packed with everything you need to level up your guitar skills!