Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel Guitar Lesson

Learn how to play the song “The Sound of Silence” (also known as “Sound of Silence ) by Simon and Garfunkel with this free guitar lesson. This song is what made this folk music duo popular back in the 1960’s.  It was written by Paul Simon after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and is off the album Sounds of Silence.  The “Sounds of Silence” hit number one back in 1966 on New Year’s Day.  If you would like to learn more about this song, check out the article on Wikipedia here.

Video Lesson

A big thanks to Mark Easley who created this video guitar lesson on the “Sounds of Silence”.  Mark has a lot more awesome guitar videos over at his YouTube page, so be sure to check it out when you have time.

If you search online for chords and lessons on how to play this song, you will most certainly find a difference of opinion on the correct way to play it.

You can play this song with the Capo on the fourth or sixth fret and it sounds nice both ways.  I have a live recording of this song and it sounds like Paul is using a capo (Don’t have a capo? Not sure what a capo is?  Follow this link to read a post I did on the Capo not too long ago.It will explain what a capo is and how to use one with video demonstrations.) on the sixth fret, but I could be wrong.

This song uses a finger picking (finger style) technique. This may be a bit challenging if you have no experience with fingerpicking.  Mark does a really good job of explaining the fingerpicking technique in the video below.  If the finger style technique proves to be too difficult for you at this time, you can simply strum the chords and the song will still sound nice.

The chord shapes you will need to know are: Am , G Major, F Major and C Major.

As Performed By Simon and Garfunkel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZGWQauQOAQ

Additional Resources

Click here for more information on this song from Wikipedia

Sounds of Silence Chords & Lyrics

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