Landslide Guitar Lesson - Fleetwood Mac

In this acoustic guitar lesson I will show you how to play the finger-picked Fleetwood Mac classic "Landslide".

Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham has long been recognized for his incredible fingerstyle guitar technique and his work in "Landslide" is no exception.

In this Landslide guitar lesson, I will demonstrate how to play the main acoustic fingerstyle part to this Fleetwood Mac classic.

The tuning for "Landslide" will be standard tuning with a capo at the 3rd fret. Any fret numbers I mention in the video lesson will be referring to that number of frets above the capo. So essentially just treat the capo as the zero fret.

There are actually a few guitar layers going on during "Landslide", but I am sticking with the essential parts in this lesson so it will sound great with just one guitar.

For the entire song Lindsey Buckingham employs the technique of Travis Picking. There are also many songs on GuitarLessons365 that use this picking technique.

After you get the fingerpicking pattern in your hands, you will basically need to just learn the different chord progressions in order to play the entire song.

The verse uses a short 4 chord progression but is broken up every once in a while with a short pause on the A minor 7th chord. Make sure you know the sound of the song very well and you shouldn't have much trouble figuring out when these short pauses occur.

For the chorus we have a lot more going on both with the amount of chords in the progression and the extra embellishments that are thrown into the chords. These embellishments vary each time around, but in the lesson I will demonstrate a nice a relatively consistent way to approach them.

The main focus throughout all of these guitar parts for "Landslide" is in the consistent Travis Picking pattern. If you can keep this pattern going smoothly, and can play all the chords in time, you will sound great no matter what embellishments you may or may not add to the chords. :)

So I hope this song will give you a nice challenge and also a great song to play at the end of it!

Carl...

[jenniferfranks]

Anytime I want to find a song played the right way-I go to Carl. Thanks for all the great lessons! You are making us all better players!

[dss]

As a former clubbing guitarist, way back in the 80s and 90s, ...I must say you are one phenomenal guitarist. Much respect. I am surprised one of the big name acts hasn't grabbed you for their tour or whatever.

Anyway, thanks for making excellent vids.

[stepman]

Thanks for all the lessons Carl, i am retired with disabilities but i can still play and these lessons give me something to look forward to.

[shortvideos-xeyr]

Carl, I just found your lesson to this beautiful song. No one could have explained it more concisely than you did. You're simply an amazing guitarist and teacher. Thank you so much!

[pioloooz]

The song isn't pretty hard itself, but those hammer on and pull off were driving me a bit crazy. Now, thanks to your exhaustive explanation, I got the whole song. Thank you very much!

[rachgasmr]

I’ve always loved this song and my mom requested for me to learn it and this video helped a ton! I’ve been strumming mainly but now I’m starting to pick up fingerpicking and I love it...thanks so much for this vid!

[suzannecoholic]

I've had this song bug playing in my head for a few days now. Decided I should probably stream it, and lo and behold! - an old 365 lesson on it! Thank you!

[Thotola]

Thks Carl for this highly pedagogic and accurately shot lesson. I'm grateful

[WisconsinBeerGuzzler]

Thank you so much. You made this easy for me. I have found that the Travis picking pattern will mess you up if you think about it too much. I like how you show the chorus can be somewhat random as long as your chord and bass notes are correct. I play that part different everytime :)

[Placeseveryone]

Stellar lesson. You have SUCH good taste in song selection. Thnx for this one - much appreciated.

[patriciaharding]

Thanks for posting this. You make it look so easy! I know that learning this fluently will increase my skill, not to mention my repertoire will grow with the addition of this great song.

[johnnieguitar]

The BEST lesson for this tune on Youtube! THANK YOU CARL!

[tiannacompton-vidal]

I appreciate the tutorial. However, I was really confused about the chords. I feel like it was explained well maybe a visual as well?

[sweetiepienumber]

Thanks! Good work with the tri-screen. As usual, I am also grateful that I can pause and change playback speed. I appreciate it.

[dricemusic]

Thanks for teaching this song it’s very beautiful I’ve been teaching guitar for four years now, so this would be awesome to learn .

[juanitat]

Thanks, my guitar teacher is teaching me this. I am supposed to practice it this week and your video is helpful.

[douglasgraves]

Thanks for taking enough time to explain this classic relic by Fleetwood Mac!!!

[jasonjacobs]

Learning Eric Johnson Manhattan, you're a great teacher. Took a break to come learn this :)

[kevinkiley]

Hey Carl- heard this song today and decided to learn in. Thanks for the lesson on this great song!

[goodgollywally]

Thank you for this lesson on Landslide. You are an excellent teacher. This was very helpful. I am currently trying to learn his song, but working on my Travis picking is a little shaky. Once I somewhat master that, the remaining chords will follow.