song

Thinking Out Loud Guitar Tutorial – EXACTLY like Ed Sheeran

Artist: Ed Sheeran
Genres: Pop
Decades: 2010's

Thinking Out Loud Chords:

Time Signature

79 bpm

Difficulty: Intermediate

Thinking Out Loud Guitar Tutorial

Welcome to my Thinking Out Loud Guitar Tutorial by Ed Sheeran, exactly the way he plays it. This famous fingerpicking song uses some easy chord shapes and the strum slap technique (just like in the song “Love Yourself”).

I transcribed the song from the album recording and from this studio session. When he plays it, he obviously doesn’t play it the exact same way every time, but I think I managed to extract the essence of what he’s doing in the live studio recording quite accurately so now you’ll be able to learn to play this song exactly like Ed!

“Thinking Out Loud” Sheet Music TAB no longer available due to copyright issues, but I have something even better!

Thinking Out Loud FULL PLAY-THROUGH (entire song, start to finish) available on my Patreon page

Click here

The chords are pretty simple for the most part so it’s the strumming and fingerpicking that will probably require most of your attention. He combines a few methods (strumming in various ways, fingerpicking, string smacking) and uses them all quite fluidly so be sure to take your time and carefully learn the movements if you want this to sound its best! The one technique I’d recommend brushing up on (or learning) is string smacking – here’s a video where we go over that (and there are some play-along tracks you can try out as well)