How to Play Guitar on Dust in the Wind by Kansas

This is the intro for Dust in the Wind by Kansas. This song is in the key of C in standard tuning. I'll play the intro at tempo and then slow it down. This song features a lot of concepts that you can learn from and apply to other areas of your musical development. Most notably with this song is the right hand finger style pattern. Finger style is something that a lot of guitarists get into eventually because it makes such a nice arpeggiated treatment of chords that are normally strummed and you can get a lot more combinations of notes and embellishments of the chords that you're using. For this song, we're using the same right hand pattern for virtually the whole song except for just a couple spots where we're plucking some chords. So let's start by talking about the right hand pattern. We'll just do it on a C major chord which is the first chord of the song. This finger style pattern will use all four of your fingers except for the fourth finger. So we'll have the thumb, index, middle, and ring finger. You'll notice that I use acrylic nail hardener for my finger style playing. You certainly don't need that. You can get away with playing this song without fingernails just fine. In order to do this, we will start with this pattern. It always starts with the thumb on the bass note, which in this case is on the fifth string, and I'll pluck that simultaneously with my ring finger on the second string. Then use the index finger on the fourth string and the middle finger on the third string. Then back to the bass note, back to the ring finger, then the first finger and middle finger again. So here's that pattern very slowly. One other difficult thing about playing this finger style pattern is that there's actually a small accent with the middle finger on the third string. So if you were to play this like just a real straight feel, notice how that feels just a little dry. If we accent that third string just a little, we get something a little closer to the recording. Now let's talk about the chords that are used in this. If you listen to the recording in the right side, you'll hear some higher notes. A twelfth string is used on that side of the recording. The left-hand fingerings are exactly the same. The right-hand pattern will be exactly the same. So you can really play this song on a six-string acoustic or a twelve-string. You could also play it on, if you had two people playing, you could have a six-string and then what's called a Nashville-tuned acoustic, which is kind of like a regular six-string with kind of a twelve-string feel on it. When that happens, what the guitar does is it has the same top two strings, the E and the B, and then the rest of the strings are replaced with the twelve-string equivalents the octave up. So each of these four strings would ring up an octave higher than usual. You'd probably only want to do that if you had another person playing a regular six-string, but it can certainly be played on just a regular six-string or just a twelve-string by itself and sound perfectly fine. These chord voicings take a normal chord and then add some melody notes to it. For the purposes of this song, since we're holding a chord fingering, I'll describe what the chords are actually called. It's important to have a knowledge of theory and chord names because knowing the correct name of a chord tells you exactly what notes are in it. So the first chord is just a C major. Then we'll go to a C major 7. This is made by just lifting up your first finger, so it adds a B note, B natural, to the C major chord. The next chord is a C add 9. A lot of times you may see this written as a C2, but the correct name for it is C add 9. To do that, take the fourth finger and add it to the second string on the third fret. Then we'll go back to the C major again. So those two measures will look like this. The next two measures have variations on an A minor chord. We'll actually start with an A sus 2 chord. This is made by taking an A minor chord, removing the third of the chord, which is a C, so we have an open B string. So we have just the second finger and third finger for the A minor chord down, and we'll leave that B string ringing open. Then we'll go to an A sus 4, so we're adding the 4 right here. So I'll take my fourth finger and add it to the third fret on the second string, then back to a regular A minor, and then an A sus 2. That'll use the same exact right hand fingering that we already used. The second half of the intro uses the same chords, but in a little bit different order. So that'll start with the C add 9 chord, going to a C major, C major 7, C add 9, then A minor, A sus 2, A sus 4, back to A minor. On this last A minor chord, all we're going to hit is the thumb and the ring finger together, and then the index finger and the middle finger, and then we'll do a little chord jump here. We'll start with the A minor, and we'll use all the fingers together. The thumb, index, middle, and ring. Pluck it all at the same time. Let me give you a tip for doing that, by the way. It's a lot easier if you keep your thumb outside of your fingers. If you leave it in here, it makes it very tricky to pick all the strings at the same time, because the thumb really gets in the way of your index finger. If you do kind of a classical guitar trick, move your thumb outside of your fingers like this, just by scooting it along the string, makes it a lot easier for your fingers and your thumb to work independently. So I'll play that for one eighth note, and then I'll go to a G over B chord. To do this, I'll have the second finger on the second fret of the fifth string, and the fourth finger on the third fret of the second string. So that's the end of that intro. And for both of those chords, I'm just plucking the four middle strings all at once. So I'll play the intro at half speed. And that's the intro section. This is the verse segment for Dust in the Wind. I'll play the verse at tempo, and then slow it down. This verse is made up of many of the same chords that you'll see in the rest of the song. We start with the one chord that's the tonal chord for the song, which is the C major, and that will go for two beats, and then we'll go to a G over B chord. So we'll go through one cycle of the right hand fingering for the C, same right hand fingering, and then to a G over B. To do this chord, just take the second finger, put it on the second fret of the fifth string, and take the fourth finger and put it on the third fret of the second string. And then we'll still be doing the right hand fingering on the middle four strings of the guitar. So that measure will look like this. Then going to a full measure of A minor. So you'll do the right hand fingering twice, still the middle four strings, and then a measure of G going to D minor. Now this G will have an open second string, and then using the thumb on the low sixth string. So the four strings that you'll be playing will be the sixth, the fourth, the third, and the second. So the only finger you need to have down is the third finger. So we'll do one right hand pattern of that, and then going to a D minor chord. And this can be played either with the fourth finger or the third finger, however you like to do this chord. And that'll be on the top four strings with the same right hand pattern again. Now we'll go back to an A minor, and this will be different only in one small respect, and that is when we first get to the chord, we'll hit the fifth string with the thumb on the right hand, and then the top E string, and then we'll immediately go back to the regular fingering on the middle four strings. So the next time I use my third finger of my right hand, I'll be hitting on the second string. Let's look at that one more time. So that'll happen once, and then at the end of that measure, we'll have that A minor to G over B again, just like at the end of the intro. For the second line of the verse, we'll have the same progression once again, but in the last measure, instead of having that A minor to G over B, we'll just have a full measure of A minor, where we'll start with the third finger hitting the E on the first string, and then just do the regular A minor for the second half of that measure. So I'll play the verse at half speed, and that's the verse. This is the chorus segment for Dust in the Wind. I'll play the chorus at speed, and then slow it down. The chorus segment is made up of five different chords. The first chord is a D over F sharp. Now, this chord is actually borrowed from outside of the key. When we're in the key of C, as we are in this song, the normal two chord would be a D minor chord, which we saw in the verse. So when we start with this D major chord, that gives us some interesting melodic possibilities, because it provides an F sharp note, rather than the F natural that we see in D minor. So to play this D over F sharp, we're going to start with a regular D chord, and you can leave the F sharp on the top of it on the first string off, because we're not going to be using it, but we'll have an F sharp on the bottom of the chord. So we'll just take the second finger off the top of that D chord, add the thumb onto the second fret of the sixth string, so that's adding an F sharp onto the bottom of that chord, and with the right hand, doing the same rhythm figure as before, the three fingers will be on the second, third, and fourth string, and the thumb will be on the sixth string. So I'll play that once, and then go to the G major chord that we had before with just the third finger, then going to an A minor chord, and for the second half of that measure, I'll have an A minor over G. In order to do that, just keep the same A minor shape, and add the fourth finger to the G note, that's the third fret of the sixth string, and so the thumb of your right hand will also have to go to that sixth string, so that measure will look like this. In the third measure, we'll have that D over F sharp going to the G again, and now let's talk about the final measure of the chorus. Every time you play the chorus, this will be different. For the first time, we have a melodic lick that happens in this measure, and it'll only happen on the first time through the chorus. So this is a melodic figure that takes place on the A minor chord. The right hand will continue to do the same pattern, but there's some differences in the left hand. The first thing that we'll start with is just an open fifth string and an open second string played simultaneously, and then do a hammer-on with the first finger onto the first fret of the second string. Then the first and second finger will hit the fourth and third string, and then we'll hit the open fifth string, and then remove your first finger from that first fret, and we'll hit the open second string again. So that first part will look like this again. For the end of that measure, it'll be very similar to the end of the intro and the first part of the verse, where we'll have that A minor to G over B, except in this case, we'll do a quick hammer-on from that open second string to the first fret on the second string. So I'm using all my right hand fingers to pluck those four strings, and then getting the G over B. So let's play that measure a few times. Once more. The second time through the chorus, we'll be going straight into the string instrumental section. So instead of playing that figure, you'll go straight to that A minor add 9. So refer to the instrumental section for those fingerings. The last time through the chorus, there will be a repeat chorus. So instead of playing that measure that we just looked at with the first ending, you'll just do the A minor to A minor over G again, and then repeat the chorus. So I'll play the chorus at half speed. And that's the chorus. This is the instrumental segment of Dust in the Wind. I'll play it at tempo and then slow it down. So the first A minor add 9 chord, I'll use the third finger on the 7th fret 4th string, and the first finger on the 5th fret 3rd string. Now the add 9, the 9 interval that's added to this chord, is going to be the open B added to an A minor chord. And so we'll use the same right hand pattern twice for this chord. The second chord is going to be a G major over A. To make this chord fingering, just take the first finger and move it to the 5th fret on the 4th string, and take the 4th finger and move it to the 7th fret on the 3rd string. It's important to use the 4th finger here because we'll need it on this string in a later chord voicing that we'll get to. So I'll do the same right hand fingering again. The next chord will be an F sharp 11 over A. So to do that chord, simply take this fingering and move it down two frets. The sharp 11 is this B natural note that we add to the F chord, and then once again we've got an A in the bass. The last chord will be a D minor 7 over A. To make this chord, add the 2nd finger to the 3rd fret of the 2nd string. That's why it helps to use the 4th finger on this 3rd string. We'll play that once and then remove the 2nd finger to go back to the F sharp 11. Now that sequence of chords will be played three times. One time during the vocal segue to the string instrumental, and then twice during the string instrumental. For the second half of that instrumental section, we're going to just play a chord progression that is identical to the intro. So those chords once again would be a C major, C major 7, C add 9, then the A sus 2, A sus 4, A minor, and then going from that A minor to the G over B. Make sure to refer to the intro for those exact chord fingerings and the sequence if you need it. So I'll play the bridge at half tempo, to the intro, and that's the instrumental section. This is the outro segment for Dust in the Wind. I'll play it at speed and then slow it down. As you can see, the outro is just a repeating figure. So we start with the last measure of the repeated chorus, and that'll be on an A minor chord. And then we'll just use the variations on that A minor that we've seen elsewhere in the song. The interesting thing about this outro is that it's a sequence of three chords. Obviously we're in 4-4 time, so you'll have a different chord starting each measure as that cycle goes through, because it's an odd number of chords. So we've got the A minor chord, and that's the beginning of the last measure of the chorus. And following that will be an A sus 2 chord. We had this before in the intro, so A sus 2 is just removing the first finger from the second string. Then it will go to an A sus 4 chord. We'll be replacing that third with the fourth, fourth finger on the third string of the second. And then back to the A minor, and it'll start all over again. This repeats as the song fades out. So I'll play a few repetitions of the outro at half tempo. And that's the outro. This is the performance of Dust in the Wind by Kansas. Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind. Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea. All we do, crumbles to the ground that we refuse to see. Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind. And sky, it slips, dust in the wind, dust in the wind, everything is dust in the wind.