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House of the rising sun is well known as a beginners guitar song, it's easy right? Well yes and no. It's easy to play the chords and its even easy to get it sounding quite good without too much effort. That's all true but now try playing it with the original plectrum pattern. See the video at the bottom of this page. All of a sudden it's not so easy. The first four notes are played with one continuous downstrokes (skipping the B string) then you use an up stroke on the E string, a downstoke on the B string and a last upstroke on the G string.

The timing also isnt so easy, split into two bars it's a [ 1, 2&, 3/ 1, 2, 3 ] pattern. Not so complex but it's very easy to rush. So to get it right, slow it down. You can't play it up to tempo if you can't play it slowed down.