Download here: Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here is a great song for working on mixing up picking individual notes with full chord strumming. The chords are fairly basic, the main challenge being the D/F# chord.
Slash Chords
With slash chords, the note after the slash (/) is played in the bass. So D/F# is a D chord with an F# bass note. On guitar this can be played like a regular D, with your thumb wrapped over the 2nd fret of the low E string. There are other ways to finger a D/F#, without the high E string, but the full 6 string version sounds great on this song if you can get it. If you’re struggling to get your thumb over or find another way to play the chord, a regular D chord will sound fine.
Strumming
Suggested strumming pattern for the verses:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D d DUd D d DUd
Suggested strumming pattern for the intro:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
B DUDU U UD
Beat “4” and the “and” of the intro are taken up by the single notes of the riff (see the tab).
To get the intricacies and variations of the strum, you really need to listen to the record – I’ve just given you a starting point. Pay attention to the small down strums (lowercase d’s) – these are softer strums. Also, on the record there are two guitars strumming slightly differently, one panned to each side, so you can take your pick when playing along.