Great Balls Of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis) Guitar Lesson with Backing Tracks + TAB

In this Guitar Lesson, you’ll learn how to adapt Great Balls Of Fire for guitar by combining bass lines, triads, and piano riffs, making it perfect for gigs with or without a pianist - Try it with Backing Tracks!

Great Balls Of Fire | TAB

I’m going to give you some TAB for how you could play Great Balls Of Fire’s chords on the guitar. Work your way through these ideas, then decide for yourself which parts you want to use. Most of them work across all sections.

Let’s start with the first verse, which we could also call the intro.

The climb up to C is diatonic, and so is the one to F. Going to G, we play chromatically. To move down to F, we repeat a G and then move chromatically.

For the chords after the bass line, just play triads as shown in the TAB. If this is too difficult, simply play the root notes.

Here’s the next part, adapting the piano’s right-hand part to the guitar. If there is a piano player at the gig, don’t play this for the verses!

Great Balls Of Fire TAB, verse 2 piano part.

The bridge could also be played using these kinds of chords, although let’s instead look at playing the bass line. It looks like this:

Great Balls Of Fire TAB, bridge bass line riff.

This bass line approach is also what you should do for the verse if there is a piano player present!

Here are some 6 chords as an alternative to the bass line idea, shown below for the solo progression. Just like before, you can adapt any of these ideas to any section of the song.