Levitating (Dua Lipa) Guitar Lesson with Backing Tracks + TAB

In this guitar lesson, we look at several ideas using TAB, Backing Tracks, and play-along loops to learn how to play Dua Lipa's Levitating in a band.

Levitating | TAB

Let’s use TAB to explore a bunch of ideas for how you could play Levitating on the guitar in a band setting. We’ll start with the intro – something you could play if you’ve fired the keyboard player.

Play along with the backing tracks above to see if this makes sense – you might find it a bit tricky at first.

If the keyboard player is still in the band, think about how you could play together instead. Maybe you’ll need to change how many strings you hit.

With or without keyboards, I reckon the refined version above works better.

Now let’s look at Levitating’s verse in TAB.

I’ve included some rhythmic variation here – try applying these rhythms to the other chords and see where it takes you.

Notice the little dots above the 8th notes. These mean “play short” and help avoid notating lots of 16th notes and rests.

Here’s another idea for the verse – check the dots and play along with the loop in the playlist.

This version uses a more consistent rhythm but introduces new chord shapes.

Once you can play both verse ideas, try coming up with your own. Explore new shapes and mix up the rhythms. Can you improvise your way through the verse using these two ideas as a foundation?

Now for the bridge – this time, we don’t “play short”.

This section is much more consistent and straightforward than the verse. Using contrast like this is a good idea.

Here’s another bridge variation that moves around more:

Let’s check out how to play the chorus – I’ve kept the bridge rhythm here and then developed it further.

Could you tell this was a blend of the bridge and verse rhythms?

Here’s a second chorus idea:

This time, it’s more about experimenting with the chord shapes. In a live setting, aim to improvise – it’ll keep you engaged.

Lastly, here’s the chorus tag in TAB. Notice the dot on beat 3 of bar 2 – that 8th note needs to be short!

This gives yet another way of approaching this chord progression. After working through all these ideas, what would happen if you just had a chord chart for Levitating in front of you? You’d probably start improvising naturally.

Try it using the chart and backing tracks above – the second has less production so you have to play the main riff from the top.

Below are all these TAB examples recorded for your convenience.