If you like this song and would like to have a go at a more complicated, solo fingerstyle version then I would encourage you to check out my Patreon channel where Jonathan Lewis and I teach you to become a better player. Now go and see if you can make people really sad by playing it near them. When you put all of that together you’ve got Mad World. I’ve tabbed out a simple version that shouldn’t be too challenging for you to get to grips with. You can’t really play this song without playing the beautiful intro, it would be a bit of a crime. Very kind of Roland Orzabal to make it progressively easier as we play through it. The verse has 4 chords, the pre-chorus has 3 and the chorus has 2. The verse, the pre-chorus and the chorus. There’s a lot of repetition in this song and there are really only three parts to learn.

So the T is my thumb plucking the C string on the first and third beat and my index and second finger are plucking the bottom 2 strings on the second and fourth beat That pattern will look something like this… your top string is thinner than the next one down), that will mean picking the C string throughout. So for those of you in re-entrant tuning (i.e. This is a fairly good representation of the original (feels a bit wrong calling Gary’s version original). We’re going to pick the bass note and then strum after. I’m going to run with a bit of a hybrid, part picking, part strumming. Gary plays this with a fairly simple picking pattern on guitar, but we’re going to try and emulate the very simple chords from his piano version. Realistically this is always going to sound better when fingerpicked, but let’s see if we can work out a pattern that will serve you well. When Gary plays this on an acoustic guitar (worth checking out the video where he plays alongside Curt Smith from tears For Fears), he uses a capo at fret 1 so be aware of that if you’re wanting to play along with the song. Here’s the chord boxes if you don’t know those yet.

There are just 4 chords in this one, and none of them are particularly difficult.

Gary jules mad world piano tutorial