Bonfire Heart Guitar Lesson – James Blunt

Genre:

Difficulty:
Length: 18:58

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Wikipedia page
Artist website
Music video

• Barre chords
• Chord changes

Bonfire Heart is a great song to learn if you want to take your fingerpicking skills to the next level. While the fingerstyle sections of this tutorial are aimed at intermediate guitarists, beginners can start by learning the chords and strumming them along with the song.

We’ll start our Bonfire Heart guitar lesson by learning all of the chords to the song. We’ll learn the intro, verse, chorus, and bridge. Some tablature sites will have a pre-chorus section as well, but I just include that in the verse section. The song is played in the key of G, so we’ll have chords revolving around this key.

Once you are comfortable with the chords, we’ll learn the picking pattern to Bonfire Heart. This is where things start getting really interesting since we’ll be learning a very unusual picking pattern that sounds great in this song. I’ll tell you all about it in the lesson.

You will have to practice this picking pattern quite a bit to get the timing and rhythm right. When you add the chord changes of the verse and chorus, it becomes even more difficult. The reason I’m saying this is that you should know this one isn’t a “learn in 1-day song”. In fact, it will probably take a while before you perfect all of the elements of the song, and be able to play it up to speed with the original track.

Keep it slow at first, make sure your fingers are precise, and your chord changes are spot on. Increase your speed once you can play everything smoothly. This is how you will really advance, and trust me, if you learn to play this song well, your fingerpicking skills will have advanced leaps and bounds.

Bonfire Heart song details

Bonfire Heart was released by James Blunt on his 2013 album Moon Landing. "The song is about love, life, fear, and hope," said the singer.

The music video was shot throughout Wyoming and Idaho over two days using real characters. In fact, the closing scene wasn’t planned at all. There was a real wedding taking place at the bar of the parking lot where they were filming, and the wedding crowd came out and joined Blunt’s video ad-hoc.

The song topped the charts in several countries, including Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Bonfire Heart chart rankings

• Austria: #1
• Hungary: #1
• Germany: #1
• France: #26
• Belgium: #1
• Australia: #3
• UK Singles: #4
• US Adult Top 40: #31

If you want to refine the skills you learned in Bonfire Heart, check out these lessons on songs by clicking these links:
Barre chords / Chord changes

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