This song provides an ideal way to practice basic chord progressions and fingerpicking techniques for beginners. Additionally, its simple melody should make learning to fingerpick easier.
This song uses a basic chord progression of D-G-Em. To play along, tune your guitar down a half step.
Basic chords
Beginners to guitar may benefit from starting with these open chords as an entryway into playing popular songs. Furthermore, practicing these simple shapes helps build dexterity for fingers in preparation of learning more advanced chords.
Chord diagrams depict which strings and frets you are playing when creating chord shapes, along with any nodes that indicate which finger should play each node. When colored in or displaying numbers within them, this indicates which note serves as the root note.
As you first attempt a new chord, it can be challenging to remember its shape with your fingers. One effective strategy for developing muscle memory for each chord shape is placing its shape onto your guitar for 30 seconds before taking it off, shaking your hand out and then recreating it a few times – repeat this process until muscle memory develops!
Melody
If you’re keen on picking up guitar, it is crucial that you understand how chords function. This will enable you to more quickly learn songs as well as develop overall musical proficiency. A chord consists of 3 or more notes played at once – which are known as intervals – which combine into its shape.
Music theory’s most basic chord is known as a triad. Composed of three notes separated by an interval of a third, major triads have an upbeat sound while minor ones often produce sad sounds.
Sus chords are another popular type of chord, similar to power chords but without the third note. Typically played immediately before or after parallel major or minor chords, sus chords consist of the 1st, 4th, and 5th notes from their scale respectively.
Verse
At its core, a chord is composed of multiple notes played together – providing us with the foundational concept behind musical harmony. But there is much more to chord theory which we will discuss further down.
If you spot a thick black line or an arc stretching across all six strings in a guitar chord diagram, that indicates a bar chord. There will usually be an indication on the left-hand side indicating which fret you should place your fingers to play that particular bar chord; there may even be X’s above certain strings to indicate whether you should mute or unplay those notes.
Chord extensions refer to adding extra notes to an existing chord. For instance, to extend a Cmaj7 chord into a Cmaj9, simply add an E note. Understanding chord extensions can help advanced guitarists craft more complex and exciting musical compositions.
Chorus
Dust In The Wind’s chorus features an intricate guitar chord progression on the B string that moves considerably. However, its chords are simpler than its verse and can easily be played by beginners. One notable change here is using two downstrums per chord instead of four to create a faster feel and finger picking skill development; beginners will need to practice playing it fast enough that it keeps pace with the song’s tempo.
This arrangement is solely intended for private study, scholarship and research purposes and should only be used as such.
Sheet music available as a PDF download, including full song lesson video, performance play thru video and guitar tabs.
Learn to play this acoustic rock classic from Kansas on guitar with this comprehensive lesson that features video lessons and performance play-through videos as well as tabs and lyrics.