Israel Kamakawiwo'ole Somewhere Over The Rainbow Guitar Lesson

Learn how to play “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” as performed by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole with this free guitar lesson. This song was originally played on a ukulele by Israel as you probably already know, but it sounds just as lovely on the acoustic guitar. Somewhere Over The Rainbow is actually part of a 2 song medley. The other part of this medley is the song “What a Wonderful World”.

This song became extremely popular over the years and was featured in several different movies. It was downloaded over 2 million times. It also peaked fairly high on various music charts. You can learn more about this song and Israel_Kamakawiwo’ole over at Wikipedia.

For this particular lesson, you will need to use a capo on the 5th fret. Not sure what a capo is or how to use one? Follow this link for a helpful post on how to use a capo on a guitar.

You will need to know some basic beginner guitar chord shapes for this song and they are: G Major, D Major, E Minor, C Major. That’s all you need to know for this song! The only challenging part of this song, if you haven’t been playing that long, is the strumming pattern. Marty does an excellent job of explaining things in the video lesson below.