In this video from Banjo Ben Clark, Ben shows us how to play the song ‘You Are My Sunshine’. First published in 1940 by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell, the song has always been a favorite of musicians and music lovers alike. You Are My Sunshine has reportedly been recorded by more than 350 different artists, as well as being played by countless more.
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Video text:
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Oh howdy welcome to banjo Ben Clark calm I’m banjo been here in a brand new year 2014 happy new year to you I’ve got a great song to teach you today this is oh gosh who knows how old this song is I love it I always thought that it was a happy song growing up because it talks about sunshine and the melody is all chipper but it’s actually a sad love song of a love gone wrong okay but you are my sunshine that’s what we’re going to learn today it’s a great basic version so if you’re looking for a banjo
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tune to learn that everybody’s going to like learn this one okay we’re going to dive into it here a little while I’ve got the tab for you here I’ll have the tab on the bottom of the screen if you’re watching on Facebook or YouTube here a little while I’ll ask you to go over to my website then very proud of banjo Ben Clark calm there you can join as a gold pick member and you can have access to these videos that I put out each and every week now for your my sunshine I’ve got about a 10 or 12 minute instructional video where I teach you how to play every note and then I’ve got another video where I play it very slowly from start to finish so that you can learn along with me and then we’ve got four different rhythm tracks that I play over there on guitar okay so I gradually speed it up and you have the tab to download both PDF and TIFF file formats there’s nothing else you could need okay so come on sunshine let’s jump into this one you are my sunshine on banjo we’re in the key of G and this is a fairly basic version we don’t have a lot of tough stuff going on here but I still even though it’s basic I love to play it it’s a lot of fun to play don’t
0:02:01.9 –>
forget that beneath each one of your right hand notes there I have your right hand fingerings so you see the first three notes there measure one those are all T’s so that just stands that for our thumb so we really use your thumb when we want to use our index finger there’s going to be a number one in a circle and the number two in a circle your middle finger like I said the songs in four-four okay that means four beats per measure we’re going to start off and well the whole song is going to stick pretty close to the melody but we’re going to start off just right close to the melody and with these little pickup notes okay so we’re going to strong the second beat of measure 1 or just on that opening strengthened to 1 so we’re going to go OD open G and then the second fret of the g string and then leave that down because we’re going to go into a series of forward rolls in measure 2 and we’re
0:03:00.5 –>
going to start it out by sliding it’s a sixteenth note slide from that second fret on the g string to the 4th fret Oh the reason why I say sixteenth note the reason why that’s important is because I want the slide to happen before you play that open B string you know we’re just going to continue to do some forward rolls so let’s just do measures 1 & 2 slowly 1 I need to measure three the first beats finishing up that forward roll we have three quarter notes at the end of measure three on just the open string second fret again on the g-string okay so that’s a pretty simple map measurement measure three measure four
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is going to start with a quarter note g string and then we’re going to do another sixteenth notes lie with our ring finger from the fourth to fifth fret on that low d string and we’re going to start a forward roll whenever we do that if you want to slide from lower like the second to fifth fret that sounds fun – I just like it from the fourth fret the live version let’s just play the whole first line slowly one when we get into the second line
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