House Of The Rising Sun | Chords + Lyrics
Intro
| 6/8 Am | C | D | F |
| Am | E | Am | E |
Verse 1
| Am | C | D | F |
There is a house in New Orleans.
| Am | C | E | E |
They call the Rising Sun.
| Am | C | D | F |
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy.
| Am | E |
And God, I know I’m one.
Instrumental 1
| Am | C | D | F | Am | E | Am | E |
Verse 2
| Am | C | D | F |
My Mother was a tailor.
| Am | C | E | E |
Sewed my blue jeans.
| Am | C | D | F |
My father was a gamblin’ man.
| Am | E |
Down in New Orleans.
Instrumental 2
| Am | C | D | F | Am | E | Am | E |
Verse 3
| Am | C | D | F |
Now the only thing a gambler needs.
| Am | C | E | E |
Is a suitcase and a trunk.
| Am | C | D | F |
And the only time that he’ll be satisfied.
| Am | E |
Is when he’s on a trump.
Instrumental 3
| Am | C | D | F |
| Am | E | Am | E |
Solo
| Am | C | D | F |
| Am | C | E | E |
| Am | C | D | F |
| Am | E |
| Am | C | D | F |
| Am | E | Am | E |
Verse 4
| Am | C | D | F |
Oh Mother, tell your children.
| Am | C | E | E |
Not to do what I have done.
| Am | C | D | F |
Spend your lives in sin and misery.
| Am | E |
In the house of the Rising Sun.
Instrumental 4
| Am | C | D | F |
| Am | E | Am | E |
Verse 5
| Am | C | D | F |
Well, I got one foot on the platform
| Am | C | E | E |
The other foot on the train.
| Am | C | D | F |
I’m going back to New Orleans
| Am | E |
To wear that ball and chain.
Instrumental 5
| Am | C | D | F |
| Am | E | Am | E |
Verse 6
| Am | C | D | F |
Well, there is a house in New Orleans.
| Am | C | E | E |
They call the Rising Sun.
| Am | C | D | F |
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy.
| Am | E |
And God, I know I’m one.
Outro
| Am | C | D | F |
||: Am | E | Am | E :||
| Am | E | Am | Am |
| Am | C | D | F |
||: Am | E | Am | E :||
| Am | E | Am | Am |
House Of The Rising Sun’s chords, progressions, and TAB
As one of the most common beginner guitar songs, House Of The Rising Sun by The Animals is actually pretty difficult due to the fast-picking technique.
Still, the chords are all open-position chords and I supposed you could practice slowly and therefore improve your technique. This makes playing House Of The Rising Sun a great exercise.
My favorite part is that the pattern itself holds an obvious secret to getting better, the open G string at the end of every chord – You must always think like this when playing guitar:
How can I modify the part so I can change from one chord to another?
With House Of The Rising Sun, this has been done for us, you just need a correct transcription in order to see all these great lessons.
With all this in mind, let’s look at House Of The Rising Sun’s chords using TAB. Here’s the intro.
Spend plenty of time playing the intro/instrumental section using a metronome. Using my tap tempo metronome, you can set a timer. Do this for, let’s say 60 seconds, then increase the tempo with just 2 BPM.
Once you can play this accurately, not necessarily fast, play the verse as well. Do this mainly for variation, all the chords are the same, just repeated in a few different ways, like this:
Make sure you can see how every single last 8th note is an open G, apart from in bar 7 since we are playing an E chord again.
Finally, and this I haven’t seen anyone mention online or in person when talking about how to play House Of The Rising Sun. Towards the end of the song, the guitar stops this picking pattern and starts to strum instead.
Below, there is TAB for how you could do this. On the recording, the guitarist misses a few notes here and there so what you see below is ideal.
The strumming is broken up, aim to hit these notes, should you include a few more or less, that’s OK. This is not the case for the picking part, which should be played perfectly, exactly as the TAB shows.
Once you’ve spent a few days playing House Of The rising Sun’s chords as an exercise, have a go at playing along with the original recording (top of this page) from beginning to end.
House Of The Rising Sun chords | Related pages
Five similar tunes
- American Pie chords
- Blowin’ In The Wind chords
- One More Cup Of Coffee chords
- Sunny Afternoon chords
- Time Of Your Life chords
The Animals
Not just known for having written one of the world’s most famous beginner guitar songs, The Animals’ bass player also discovered Jimi Hendrix.
After seeing Jimi on tour with his band, he took him to England, introduced him to Eric Clapton, recorded Hey Joe, and changed the world.
The Animals on the web
