Today we’re going to learn how to play Camila cabello on guitar. This is a real fun song to play, and is a great song for those trying to learn how to play very cool rhythm acoustic guitar!
What you’ll learn from "Bam Bam"
Playing a large variety of different types of guitar chords
Switching between chords and single notes quickly
Strong sense of rhythm with your right hand
The sections of Bam Bam
Bam Bam includes four distinct sections.
Verse
Pre-Chorus
Chorus
Bridge
Each of these parts generally repeat, so once you have one part ready to go, you can just move onto the next part.
Verse
Let’s look at the first bar of the verse section first.
First, let’s learn the chords needed for this song, which are Ab, and an Eb barre chord. If this is your first time playing these chords, take some time with playing these chords clearly. Once that sounds clear and crisp, try to practice switching between these chords cleanly and in-time.
Next would be to look at the rhythm part (right hand) of the song without the chords. In order to practice the rhythm part, I recommend muting the guitar with your left hand, and just focusing on strumming.
If muted strumming is difficult for you, I HIGHLY recommend taking a look at the video I made on funk strumming. This will really help you improve your rhythm playing, and muted playing.
↓↓↓Check out my lesson on funk strumming here!↓↓↓
Finally, put everything together, and see how it sounds.
Once that sounds good, let’s move onto the rest of the Verse.
The rhythm part of the rest of the verse is exactly the same as what you just learned, but we have some different chords popping into the 3rd bar there. Break these chords down the same way you did with the previous part.
Pre-Chorus
Next is the pre-chorus. The pre-chorus also has the exact same rhythm as the chorus, so our right hand work is already done! The next step is just to move through the chords with your left hand, if you haven’t played these chords before.
Chorus
Next is the chorus part. Let’s look at the first two lines.
We have a new right hand rhythm for this part, however we’ve covered the chords in the previous sections (Db, Eb, Ab, Fm). So in terms of the chord work, we’re more or less ready to go!
So my next recommendation would be to jump right into working on the rhythm part (right hand) as you did in the last section.
The only thing that might be slightly new is switching between a bass note and chords. In terms of how to practice this, I would recommend this order.
Chord check
Rhythm (right hand) check
Bass-Chord practice.
Work on the first bar with the Db first, and then once you feel that’s comfortable. Move forward and tackle the rest of the section.
The next two bars are more or less the same, with the exception of some slightly different chords in bar 19 and bar 23. Just as you did before, focus on these two bars, and then lock it in with the rest of the tune.
If you’d like to see how I play this part in particular, check out my play-through of this tune.
↓↓↓Check out my play-through here!↓↓↓
Bridge
The final part we’ll look at is the bridge. The great part about this is by now, you’ve probably gotten used to playing this type of rhythm, and switching between chords and bass notes. So picking up this part shouldn’t be too difficult.
Just tackle this the same way you did before.
And that is the full song in a nutshell! Again, this is a great tune to learn if you’re looking for something cool and rhythmic to play.
If you feel you'd like some personal guidance on any part of this tune, hit me up for a free trial lesson, and let's see what we can do.
Until next time, good luck and have fun!