Bon Iver - Skinny Love - Guitar Lesson

About Skinny Love

Open D tuning is the whole story with "Skinny Love." Bon Iver built the song around an aggressive, percussive strumming style in that tuning, and getting the right chord voicings under your fingers takes some adjustment if you normally play in standard. The open strings ring together in ways that standard tuning simply does not give you, so spend time just getting comfortable with where your chord shapes land before worrying about feel. At 180 BPM the strumming feels relentless, and the real challenge is maintaining that intensity without tensing up your picking arm. The dynamics matter enormously here: the verses need restraint and the choruses need force, and that contrast is harder to control than it first appears. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop the strumming pattern slowed down until your right hand is relaxed and even, then gradually bring it back up to tempo. This is a Folk Rock track that rewards slow, patient drilling far more than powering through it at full speed.

• The song is played in Open D tuning, which gives the open strings a resonant, droning quality central to the arrangement.
• The right-hand strumming pattern is aggressive and percussive, requiring careful dynamic control to nail the contrast between verse and chorus.
• Practising the chord transitions slowly in Open D is essential, as the voicings differ significantly from standard tuning shapes.