5 of The Best Beginner Electric Guitar Songs
If you’re new to guitar, you need to start learning some of the best beginner electric guitar songs. Our list of the 5 best electric guitar songs will include iconic guitar riffs combined with some simple chords. After you learn these, you can strum along with the band and rock out with some awesome classic guitar riffs!
The following list will include songs that have both a signature riff and some easy chords. So if you’ve been looking for some easy guitar songs for beginners to add to your arsenal of licks, look no further! Let’s take a look at these 5 songs!
Oh! And before I forget, if you need a hand reading any of the chord diagrams or tablatures below, head over to our posts on How to Read Chord Diagrams and How to Read Guitar Tablature! This will fill you in on any information you need so you can keep on learning rocking!
1. (Don’t Fear) The Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult
I have always found the main riff to Blue Oyster Cult’s (Don’t Fear) the Reaper to be a hauntingly beautiful song to play on electric guitar. The best part, it’s a 3-chord song and perfect for a beginner! It has two open chords and one bar chord!
If you want to see our full lesson with chords, tabs, & lyrics, click here!
The Chords!
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper is an easy guitar song for a beginner with chords that anyone can play! All you need to know is a Am chord, a G chord, and an F chord. The Am and the G chord should be no problem, and the F chord should be challenging for a beginner. Keep at this chord as it will help you build your hand and finger strength. Once you master one bar chord, a whole new world of possibilities will open up on the guitar for you, so don’t give up! Stay motivated! Let’s check out these chord diagrams.
Main Guitar Riff!
I love, love, love the opening riff to Blue Oyster Cult’s (Don’t Fear) The Reaper, and it’s so easy to learn! You can skip the F bar chord and start playing this lick, as the F bar chord turns into a power chord! Awesome! What really makes this riff shine is the open G string that drones at the end of each chord. It’s a fat sound and people will think you’re a pro player when you pull this riff out of your back pocket.
And please, don’t forget the only prescription for a fever is more cowbell. Get your best buddy a cowbell, and tell him to keep the beat because you guys have some serious rocking out to do!
2. Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Continuing on with the best beginner electric guitar songs, I can’t see this list without Fortunate Son. Roll the opening credits to a Vietnam War movie now! Fortunate Son is the perfect song for a beginner. It also give you a bonus, in that the studio version was not recorded in E standard tuning! It was recorded in D standard tuning. Essentially, everything you already know on guitar can be played immediately on D standard tuning, and this could be your first song learned in D standard!
Many artists use standard tunings in different keys. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix tuned their guitars to Eb standard tuning. Many metal bands use D standard tuning to get a heavier sound. Now you can use the D standard tuning too! Watch our YouTube video to see how the chords and licks are played. Then continue on to read about the chords and the guitar riffs. Also, head over to our full post on how to play Fortunate Son!
The Chords!
The chords to Fortunate Son will build on chord shapes you already know from E standard tuning. However, because the guitar is tuned a whole step down to D standard tuning, you need to rename your chord shapes one whole step down. So and E chord in E standard tuning will be a D chord in D standard tuning. An A chord in E standard tuning, is a G chord is D standard tuning. And so on and so forth. Check out the chord diagrams below!
Now that you know the chords, check out the music staff below! This outlines the verse and chorus for the song. And there’s some bonus licks in there too if this is too easy for you!
The Main Guitar Riff and Guitar Solo!
I think the opening guitar riff to Fortunate Son and the guitar solo are some of the most accessible licks for a beginner. This easy rock guitar song is going to have you sounding like your heroes in no time at all! Check out the tabs below! Also, for $0.99 you can purchase the guitar tablature and follow along with the video! Just click here! If you don’t want to buy the tablature, no problem! Just come back to The Smelly Tele, and you can view the tabs & chord diagrams for free!
3. Back in Black, AC/DC
There is possibly no other song that is more iconic to rock n roll than Back in Black by AC/DC. It deserves to be on this list of the best beginner electric guitar songs and like much of AC/DC’s catalog, it is surprisingly easy!
Back in Black is a 5 chord song. For the most part, it centers around a E-D-A progression and stays this way during the verses and one of the guitar solos. During the choruses, a B and a G chord are added to the mix and add to the power of the song. Today, I’ll breifly run through the chord diagrams for this song and I’ll show you the main guitar riffs for the verses!
For those of you who want to learn the solos, that’s fantastic! Unfortunately, the subject of this post is easy electric guitar songs, so I’m going to exclude the advanced portions of the song which is pretty much all of the solos.
We also have a video lesson that breask down the chord diagrams and tablature on Youtube! Check it out! And if you want to check out our full lesson on Back in Black, click here!
The Chords!
The Main Guitar Riffs!
This guitar riff is iconic! It is one of the most easily recognizable licks out there, and I can’t wait for you to add this to your guitar skill set! Plus, if you’re looking for easy guitar songs for kids, this will get them excited and have them rocking out in no time! The opening riff is straight forward and has two easy little licks to throw in between the verses of the song. Let’s check out the tab for the verse!
The chorus is a collection of power chords and open chords, and because of this, the chorus to Back in Black is super easy to learn! You’re going to sound like a rock god. Check out the tab for the chorus below!
3. Pretty Woman, Roy Orbison
Pretty Woman is such a great easy rock guitar song! Today we’re going to be learning Roy Orbison’s version rather than Van Halen’s. Van Halen does a fantastic rendition, but Eddie is such a good player that I can’t justify putting his version into a post on best beginner electric guitar songs. While Van Halen is one of my favorites, today you and I will be looking at the classic version. Check out our YouTube video lesson below!
The Chords!
Pretty Woman is great for a beginner because it has a lot of chords! “What?! Shouldn’t a beginner song have less chords?”
Yes and no. I think if all you learn as a beginner are three and four chord songs, you may feel like you’re not making any progress. To advance as a guitarist, you’ll need to find songs that built up of easy pieces, and assemble them in a new or more complex pattern. Pretty Woman broke me out of three chord sons, and it will help break you out of the three chord song too!
All of the chords in this song are open chords with one exception, the F#m chord. This is great if you’re a beginner who is starting to get their open chords down. This song will help you switch from one open chord to another. This will help you get faster at switching between chords. It will also force your fingers to develop muscle memory, which is when your hand automatically changes chord fingerings without you having to turn on your brian and think about moving each individual finger.
Plus, you get a challenging chord with the F#m bar chord thrown in there. If you’re trying to get your finger strength up, this song is perfect since the bar chord comes up often and gets sprinkled between the other open chords! Once you’ve mastered this song, your going to really look like you know what you’re doing on guitar because you’ll be strumming through all 8 chords like it’s nothing!
Now, onto the verses, choruses, and the bridge. Check out the chord diagrams and music staff below. This will give you the chords in order so you can start strumming along to the song.
The Main Guitar Riff!
What makes Pretty Woman a great beginner guitar song is it has an awesome and easy electric guitar riff right out of the gate. I think this main guitar riff should be at the top of the list of easy electric guitar song tabs. It’s really really simple and quick for a beginner to pick up. Check out the tab below!
5. Day Tripper, The Beatles
Day Tripper is a great pop song for your electric guitar and an easy Beatles song on your guitar. The main riff is funky and fun to play. Check out the video below for a walk-through of the main riffs and chords. If you’re feeling ambitious, I think the guitar solo outlined in the video is achievable for a beginner. But if it seems to be a bit too tough for you, that’s OK. Get the chords down, and get the main riff down. Check out our YouTube video lesson. It breakdowns the chords and the main riffs!! Also, check out our full post on Day Tripper!
The Chords!
The chords to Day Tripper will be a good challenge for a beginner. This song has a bunch of bar chords, but you only need to learn two bar chord shapes! Let’s check out some of the chord diagrams. If this is tough for you, don’t give up! Learning bar chords is critical for you in your guitar journey and every beginner struggles with bar chords. I struggled with them too, and I thought I would never get it. But with practice, you will pick it up!
Note, the E7 chord used in this song might be new to you. If it is, great! This chord pops up all over the place in popular music, and you are sure to use it in your future. Most notably, this is the famous chord used for Creedence Clearwaer Revival’s Born on The Bayou!
And the final chord progression to the best beginner electric guitar songs can be seen below! The verse is the same as the chords shown over the main riff.
The Main Guitar Riffs!
What makes this an easy Beatles song on electric guitar is the main guitar riff is played in different postions; however, the fingering stays almost exactly the same! Once you learn the first riff in the key of E, you can play the next riff in the key of A easily! Then, to play it over the B chords, you just need to move the riff up to the 7th fret, change the first note of the riff, and bam! You can play it in B!
Also, for $0.99 you can purchase the guitar tablature and follow along with the video! Just click here! If you don’t want to buy the tablature, no problem! Just come back to The Smelly Tele, and you can view the tabs & chord diagrams for free!
Thanks for Reading!
These super easy guitar songs for beginners will keep you busy and hopefully keep you practicing! Like what you’re reading? Enter your email address below, and click Sign Up to subscribe to our email list. You’ll get the latest updates from The Smelly Tele the moment they’re published. We will never send you spam.
And if you struggled with any part of this lesson, reach out and let me know! I’d be happy to help you work through one part or another!
Plus, if you want some more of the best beginner electric guitar songs mapped out, feel free to contact me! I’d love to tailor a lesson for you and post it on the site for others to enjoy too!
