Easy Guitar Song – Fast Car by Tracy Chapman

Learn how to play Fast Car by Tracy Chapman with this free guitar lesson. This song is probably Tracy Chapman’s most popular song. It was released back in 1988 off her debut album “Tracy Chapman“. Fast Car hit #6 on the Hot 100 and was a top 10 hit in the United Kingdom. This song won a Grammy for “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance” and was also nominated for other Grammies including “Song Of The Year”. You can read more about this song over at Wikipedia.

This is an easy folk guitar song for all you beginners out there.  It uses some basic fingerstyle guitar playing, so if you do not have any experience with finger style guitar, then this will be great introduction.

Apart from the main finger style riff that plays through most of this song, this song uses basic beginner acoustic guitar chords and they are: C Major, G Major, E Minor and D Major.

The only real tricky part of this song that you may struggle with in the beginning is the strumming pattern, which Justin explains in the video below.  Just hang in there are practice over and over again until you can play this well.  Don’t make the mistake of giving up out of frustration. Check out this post I put together not too long ago on strumming patterns and techniques for acoustic guitar.  I believe you will find that post most helpful.

Fast Car by Tracy Chapman Guitar Lesson

A very big thanks to Justin Sandercoe for putting this awesome video guitar lesson together.  I have said this before on my site, but will say it again. Justin is definitely one of my all time favorite guitar instructors from YouTube.  Do yourself a favor and visit his YouTube Page and his Website when you have time for tons of free guitar lesson.

The Original as Performed by Tracy

Additional Resources

More Information About This Song From Wikipedia

Fast Car Guitar Chords & Lyrics

Fast Car Guitar Tab

Download Tracy Chapman Songs From iTunes