Ben E. King had a huge hit with this in the 50’s. In fact, it was such a big hit that the chord changes are sometime called the 50’s progression, as it fueled so many classic pop/rock songs. The song was inspired by the spiritual “Lord Stand by Me”, has over 400 recorded versions, and was used in a 1986 film by the same name. It’s a great song to play with others and at sing-alongs as it’s so popular. If you can learn the C, Am, F and G chords, then you can learn how to play Stand By Me
on guitar.
- Listen to the song in the video above so that you are familiar with it.
- Get the guitar chords and lyrics for an easy version of
Stand By Me
in the key of C. All you need do is to repeat the chords below, with an easy strum of “down, down/up, down, down”.
- Watch the video below to see how to play the chords and chord progression. It is good to use a metronome (as found in the eMedia Guitar Toolkit) to help you keep a steady tempo.
Watch this video from eMedia Interactive Rock Guitar, which uses the eMedia Animated Fretboard to make it even easier for you to see how to change between the D and G chords.
eMedia Interactive Rock Guitar also helps you master common guitar techniques like palm muting and barre chords, which are used in the middle section of Stand By Me’ and in many other rock, pop and country songs. It also includes Jam tracks to help you learn lead guitar and other great guitar songs like Tired of Waiting for You
and You Really Got Me
(Kinks), All Right Now
(Free) and others.
Intermediate Version
If you would like to learn how to play Stand By Me’ on guitar with the same chord voicings as Tom Petty, then you will need to use slightly more difficult chord fingerings. His version has the guitar with a capo at the first fret and uses the E, Aadd9, and Bsus4 chords. as seen in the video below.