Old Man (Neil Young) Guitar Lesson with TAB

Old Man Guitar Lesson + TAB
In this guitar lesson, there's a TAB for how to play Old Man on just one acoustic guitar!


Old Man | TAB


This is not going to be easy so make sure you have time set aside to learn how to play this incredible Neil Young tune.

Here’s the intro and also the first chorus.

Old Man TAB, intro.

Use the original recording to play along, and focus on reading the TAB – it’s all 16th notes after that first 8th.

This will take a while to get right, maybe you spend some time on it and get close, then move on to the next section, you can always come back to it later.

Here’s the first instrumental section, it comes after the first chorus which has one more bar of 6/4, then this:

Old Man TAB, instrumental 1.

Notice how the G chord is on beat 4.



Here’s the verse, it’s similar but not the same. The G is now on beat 3 and there are fewer 6/9 chords, you could even scrap them completely.

Old Man TAB, verse.

And lastly, here’s instrumental 2 and chorus 2.

Old Man TAB, instrumental 2, chorus 2.

Practice all sections until they feel natural, then use the chords, lyrics and chord chart with the original recording. As I said in the beginning, this is not easy but it is possible,

My TAB is designed to work on just one guitar, it’s not a note-for-note replica of Neil’s part, but it’s very close.



Old Man TAB | Related Pages


Old Man | Chord + Lyrics

Old Man chords lesson

You can learn how to play Old Man by Neil Young using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recording.

| 6/4 Dm9add4 |4/4 D (Dsus4 Dsus2) |
Old man look at my life I’m a lot like you were…


Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics

When you can play the TAB for Old Man, try these five tunes from the songbook.


Neil Young tunes

Neil Young wrote Old Man.

Neil Young started out with Buffalo Springfield, briefly joined Crosby, Stills & Nash, and collaborated with Pearl Jam but is best known for his solo career.

His best tunes include Harvest Moon, Heart Of Gold, Old Man, The Needle And The Damage Done, My My, Hey Hey, and Like A Hurricane.


Neil Young on the web

Neil Young Official website


About me | Dan Lundholm

Dan Lundholm wrote this guitar lesson and TAB for Old Man.

This was a guitar lesson about Old Man chords, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.

Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.


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