Learn The Beatles: "Come Together" On Guitar

Get your guitar in Drop D tuning because that's how we'll play the bass riff for Come Together by The Beatles on the acoustic guitar! Drop D tuning is not almost certainly what was done on the original recording, which is mostly bass and electric piano. Still, it works great to reproduce those Rock and Roll patterns on the acoustic guitar.

How to Tune to Drop D On Guitar

Turning your guitar to Drop D is as simple as tuning the thickest string down one tone! All you want is to match the open thickest string to the open fourth string, the D string. They should sound the same! If you want a little extra fine-tuning, you can play a harmonic at fret 12 on the thickest string. You'll hear that the string stops wobbling when it's in tune!

Ready? Now let's learn how to play the classic Come Together riff on the acoustic guitar. Get JustinGuitarTABS to follow along with this and over 600 other song tutorials.

Come Together: Play the Bass Guitar Riff!

To play the riff for Come Together, follow these steps:

Play the thickest string twice,
On beat 2, put finger 1 on 6:5 (string 6, fret 5), then play consecutive hammer-ons at frets 6 and 7 with fingers 2 and 3,
Place your little finger down on 5:8, then play 5:5 with finger 1. This comes on the "+" of 2.

Playing this riff might be tricky because of the little hammer-on section, which is 16th-note triplets. You're better off not counting the rhythm for those. Just make sure you stay on the beat, relax, and play.

Even if you get the notes right for this riff, a wonky rhythm and feel will make it sound strange. It's a simple riff, but you have to nail the time feel.

Come Together by The Beatles: Verses & Chorus

Playing Come Together verses and chorus in Drop D is also very fun! We start with a D chord, and if we play the thickest three strings open, we can play a Rock and Roll pattern by putting the second finger down on the second fret of the fifth string. :) Not sure how? Check out the video lesson for more details, but it's like a 12 Bar Blues Shuffle. :)

After four bars on D, we switch to A. Finger 1 barres the three thickest strings at fret 7 and we repeat the shuffle pattern. After a bar, slide your finger back two frets to G and strum once.

There's only one other part to learn, and it's pretty easy too. Check out the video for all the details. :)

Explore Come Together

This is a great song to jam with a bass player friend – it doesn't have to be Paul McCartney, eh? :) But this classic Beatles song has an incredible bass riff, and you can always opt to leave that one for the bass player and just join in with the groovy parts.

There are plenty of fun things to explore! If you'd like to go even further, there are some lovely guitar solos you can try, but you'll need a jam buddy or a loop pedal. They're not that difficult to work out, and there's a lot to learn from transcribing other people's riff. But this is also a lot of fun to jam with. Explore and see! The E Minor Pentatonic Scale should do the trick. ;)

Check out more Beatles song tutorials and grow your Fab Four repertoire!