Guitar Sessions 28: Play the Beatles’ “Across the Universe”
In this episode of Guitar Sessions, learn an arrangement of the Beatles’ “Across the Universe” based on the version on the Let It Be album.
John Lennon considered “Across the Universe” one of his best songs. It is a lovely and mysterious song, full of fascinating irregularities in lyric phrasing, in the chord progression, and in the meter.
In this lesson I teach an arrangement that stays close to the version on Let It Be, with the original guitar intro and all, but also adds some embellishments of my own. My rendition is in dropped-D tuning, which Lennon did not use for this song, but it works beautifully, giving you lower bass notes and the opportunity to add some simple melodic riffs not available in standard tuning.
At the end of the lesson, I perform the full song as a duet with Wendy Ramsay. Here’s a video of the song by itself.
Get in tune
One twist with this song is that the Let It Be track sounds in C#—Lennon used D shapes, but his guitar was tuned down a half step. For simplicity’s sake, in this lesson I teach and perform the song in D.
For more about the use of lowered tunings, by the way, see this Guitar Sessions episode about “Fortunate Son” and other Creedence Clearwater Revival hits that John Fogerty played on a guitar tuned down a step.
Charts/tab and audio downloads
On Patreon you can download all the lyric/chord charts and tab for “Across the Universe,” plus an mp3 of our duet, and an mp3 of the Let It Be track, pitch adjusted to the key of D (yes, it sounds a little odd a half step up, but nice to be able to play along without retuning).
I hope you enjoy the song and its peaceful, meditative feeling.
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