Learn how to play "Lightning Crashes"by Live on guitar!

Lightning Crashes by Live is a 90's classic and a fantastic song for practicing your barre chords – you'll need them for pretty much the whole song! :)

You'll find a different strumming pattern in the verses and the choruses, so it's also an excellent song to practice your dynamics.

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Though the tabs are great for picking up the chord progression, your ultimate goal should be to memorize the chords. Now let's get to a close-up and check out how to play Lightning Crashes by Live on guitar.

Lightning Crashes by Live – Guitar Chords & Sequences

The progression for the verses is E B F# F#. You'll start with an open E chord (022100) and then jump to a B barre chord with an A shape (X24442). If you can't play this chord change smoothly, I'd recommend spending some time practicing that alone. A smooth transition will make you sound way better!

The next chord you need is an F# Major using E Major grip (244322). And that's all the chords you need to play the verses. To switch back to E from F#, you can either lift off the barre and slide fingers 2, 3, and 4 back two frets, or switch to the standard fingering with fingers 1, 2, and 3. Whatever you want!

We repeat this progression four times for one verse. The chorus progression is the same except the duration of the chords: E and B last half a bar each, and F# lasts one bar.

🚨 Check out my Ultimate Guide to Easy E-Shape Barre Chords and learn how to play them! Playing barre chords is all about getting the right mechanics, and that video lesson will sort that out for you. :)

The progression changes in the bridge: G#m (466444), D#m (X68876), G#m, D#m ; G#m, D#m, E (X79997), F#. So you'll need an E-shape minor barre chord for G#m, an A-shape minor barre chord for D#m, and an A-shape Major barre chord for E. :)

Lightning Crashes by Live – Rhythm

Lightning Crashes has a nice little groove, and it works at several. The strumming is pretty easy – the trick is to nail the muted strums. I usually do this with the palm of the strumming hand, but in this case we'll lift the fretting hand. The rhythm is:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D   M D     M
M means muted strum

Over the F# and B chords, we also play muted strums on the “+ a” of 4. Just relax the barre chord after you've strummed it. The notes should go dead. :)

💡 Live Version! I've watched a couple of live videos, and it seems that for concerts the band plays Lighting Crashes in E Flat Tuning. They tune the strings down one semitone, then use F, C, and G chords, meaning they still play in the key of E. Interesting!

In the chorus, all-down eighth notes sound great:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D D D D D D D D

It's crucial you vary the dynamics between the verse and choruses! Two easy ways to achieve this are playing louder and changing the strumming pattern in the choruses. :)

Get The Sound!

I'm using the built-in Rotary; it's a simulator in the Kemper that sounds close to the original recording. But there's also some chorusing there and some compression too.

I tried using the Hyperchorus on the Kemper, and I felt like it got a little closer to the original version, maybe a bit more extreme. It's almost certain that you can get even closer if you use some nice analog effects.

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