How To Play Graceland
By Paul Simon

On this page I'd like to explain to you how to play Graceland By Paul Simon. Check out my acoustic demo clip and grab some free tabs in the lower right hand menu.

Paul Simon's album "Graceland" was released in Aug 1986 and reached #1 in several countries and peaked at #3 in the US.

The song itself when released as a single, failed to chart any higher than #38. Nonetheless, Graceland is a great tune for the acoustic and Simon says one of the best songs he's ever written.

The Graceland album was recorded mainly in South Africa and featured many artists from South Africa. Los Lobos also appeared on one of the album tracks and they had some legal issues with Simon about stealing one of their songs. Not sure if that was ever settled or not.

This is basically an all rhythm tune with no lead guitar anywhere. I do use two different rhythm patterns however.



For chords in this you'll need an E, A, Dbm, B, and E. I also flatten out the E chord in the chorus.

                 

Free Tab Available


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Full Tutorial - .wmv format - 8 min 26 sec

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When playing the verses you can get away with playing note-dn-note-up-dn and repeat at a faster pace. I do a quick slide during the intro on the A string up to the 7th fret.

You can also play the bottom of 3 strings from the bottom up plus the bottom string again during the rhythm pattern.

During the chorus I flatten out the E chord by playing the bottom 3 strings on the 3rd fret and the right hand moves to a simply steady up and down pattern.

Check out the classic video in the right hand menu and grab the free lyrics and tab as well.

I hope you found this How To Play Graceland By Paul Simon useful and informative.

Feel free to tweet about it (bottom of the page) or like it on Facebook from the "Like" button above or below as that is also most welcomed.

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