Lesson Plan

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Lesson notes

I Don’t Like Mondays, is a song by Irish band The Boomtown Rats about the 1979 Cleveland Elementary School shooting in San Diego/California. It was written by their lead singer and Band Aid co-founder Bob Geldof.

The title is based on the explanation that 16-year-old shooter Brenda Ann Spencer gave when being asked why she had done it. She responded: ‘I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.’

The song is heavily piano driven and this lesson teaches how to play a similar sounding arrangement on the guitar.

It’s done in standard tuning, but in order to match the original recording one would need to tune down all six strings a half step.

We take a look at the progression in the key of C, the signature intro and several little melodic piano fills, which appear throughout the song. This creates quite a few challenges for both the fretting and strumming hand.