Walk off the Earth/Lorde – Royals (Chords)

Lorde/Walk off the Earth – Royals (Chords)

I post a lot of instrumental fingerpicking pieces but I don’t often show fingerpicking as an accompaniment. Doing the acoustic riffs post made me want to dedicate some posts to uke fingerpicking in songs. So this week is dedicated to fingerpicking accompaniment.

Starting off with a perfect bit of fingerpicking for beginners. The little picking pattern in Walk off the Earth’s cover of LORDE’s Royals is dead simple.

Twiddly Bits

For the fingerpicking you don’t have to worry about the fretting hand at all. Just hold down a C chord all the time.

For the first picking pattern pluck:

– The C-string with your thumb.
– Then the E-string with your index finger.
– Then the A-string with your middle finger.
– Let all those notes ring out for the rest of the bar.

Riff1

Here’s how that’s played (slowed down a little):

There’s a slightly different pattern in the second verse. The first bar is just the same. But for the second bar you do the exact opposite. So it’s:

– The A-string with your middle finger.
– Then the E-string with your index finger.
– Then the C-string with your thumb.
– Let all those notes ring out for the rest of the bar.

Riff2

Suggested Strumming

The main pattern is a very reggae down strum on every off beat:

– d – d – d – d

Keep all the down strums short except the second one. Let that strum ring. Here’s how it sounds:


Strum

Do that twice on the C chord and once each on Bb and F.

Links

Buy the WotE version
Buy the LORDE version
Little Boxes Chords

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