When beginning a song you will hardly ever just take off from the first melody note. Instead you will start playing something to give the listener or others who are playing along (and yourself for that matter) an idea of what is coming up. There are many ways of doing this. One of the most common is to play a few measures from the end of the chorus of the song. The first three examples below are generally known as “pick-up notes” and work well in many songs. Each of these are meant to be played in the key of G with the first chord of the song being a G chord.

Intro #1

The first example works well when the first melody note is the 3rd string open (a G note).

Intro #2

The following example works well when the first melody note is a D note (3rd string 3rd fret or 1st string open, which is the same note).

Intro #3

This lick works well when the first melody note is either the open 3rd string (G) or the open 4th string (D)

Intro #4

The following lick is a little different than the preceding ones. It works well as an intro but can also be used as a general purpose lick as can many others.