How to Play “Life Is A Highway” On Guitar?
Canadian musician Tom Cochrane’s song “Life Is a Highway” is on his second album, Mad Mad World (1991). The song peaked at number one in Cochrane’s native Canada in late 1991. In August 1992, “Life Is a Highway” hit number six on the Billboard Hot 100 list in the United States, and it also climbed to the top three in Australia and New Zealand that same year. Rascal Flatts covered the song for the Cars soundtrack after Chris LeDoux sang it on his 1998 album One Road Man.
Rascal Flatts, a country music group from the United States, recorded a version of this song in 2005 for the Pixar animated film Cars, which was released on June 9, 2006. The song received many digital downloads, driving it to the seventh slot on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was a bonus track on later versions of “Me and My Gang” and their first greatest hits CD. This performance was selected “Favorite Song from a Movie” at the 33rd People’s Choice Awards.
This tutorial will teach you how to play Life Is A Highway by the Rascal Flats on guitar. It’s a wonderful rock tune, and we’ll cover a lot of ground in this lesson, from double stops high up the neck to employing power cables and playing riffs in between. We’ll break everything down for you step by step so that at the end of this post, you’ll have all you require to play along with the recording. Let’s learn to play Rascal Flatts’s Life Is A Highway on guitar.
Intro – How to Play Life is A Highway on Guitar
Our instrument is in normal tune, and we have much to cover in the first line. Begin by holding down the E and B strings at the 13th fret. Let’s use your little finger to bridge those two notes and then place your index finger on the 10th fret of the G string so you’re striking the lowest three strings. We’ll strike a down up – down up – down up – down up – down up. The first bar goes down – up – down – up, down, up, down, up, down, down, down, up. It doesn’t begin on beat one; there’s a syncopated rhythm rest or half-beat rest before we begin. It does it four times, so the next bar is the same as the first, and you’ve already done the entire line twice. Repeat it four times, and then a rough, distorted guitar bit comes in and slowly fades out.
How to Play Life is A Highway on Guitar?
We’ll be playing A5 and D7 chords. You might use your index and ring fingers or your first and fourth. So you play the power chord, then travel down two frets, so you’re on the A string’s third fret and the D string’s fifth fret. Then another two frets, and you’re on the first fret of the A string and the third fret of the D string, and it stops. The first bar of that line is then played again on the first fret, and number three is silenced.
4th Bar:
We’re going to perform another hit on bar number four, which is a B flat chord except one and three, and then pull your index finger off and keep the other finger on the third fret of the D string. It sounds strange on its own, but it fits in tune, and then it’ll go to the first fret of the E string and the third fret of the A string, and then two punches on that.
5th Bar:
Return to the B flat chord, which is the first fret of the A string and the third fret of the D string, then the top string to the first fret of the E string, and finally, the third fret of the A string. The third fret of the A string and the fifth fret of the D string repeatedly, so bar five goes to rest.
The Last Bar:
The last bar is the B flat chord. Thus the first fret of the A string is the third fret of the D string. You play it, but then you remove your first finger off, leaving the other finger down, and it repeats itself twice. It then moves to the first fret of the E string and the third fret of the A string for an F power chord, followed by two C power chords, the third fret of the A string, and the fifth fret of the D string. Thus bar slick six gradually comes to a halt.
The lead guitar section comes in over the final bar in the next line, so let’s move on to that. We’ve got this tiny lead line that begins with a slide from 5 to 7 on the G string. Therefore, the sixth fret of the B string, the eighth fret of the B string, a bend just on the 8th fret of the B string that you maintain into the following bar, and finally, the sixth fret of the B string. And then bending up a full tone on the 13th fret of the B string, dropping it back down, pulling off to the 10th fret, and then a second 13th fret of the B string and afterward 13th fret bend on the exact string, then simply keeping that bend up.
Verse – How to Play Life is A Highway on Guitar
Then reach the verse, which is simple power chords beginning with a B flat power chord on the first fret of the A string and the third fret of the D string. You’ll smack it eight times with your palm muffled. Then, eight times, travel up a string until you hit the F power chord, the first fret of the E string, and the third fret of the A string. And then you’ve got two bars of a C power chord, the third fret of the A string, and the fifth fret of the D string. If you wish, you may emphasize different rhythms on it, and it will repeat.
Bridge – How to Play Life is A Highway on Guitar
The bridge portion is a D minor chord in which we play the 5th fret of the A string, the sixth fret of the B string with the middle finger, the 7th fret of the D string with the ring finger, and the 7th fret of the G string with the little finger. If you wanted, you could play a conventional D minor instead of the barre one. Then we have another C chord; you could play a conventional C, but we’re playing the third fret of the A string, the fifth fret of the D string, the fifth fret of the G string, and the fifth fret of the B string. The same beat comes to a halt.
Then a B flat chord with the same rhythm, so it’s the same thing down two frets, first fret of the A string, the third fret of the D string, the third fret of the G string, and the third fret of the B string. Again, you could play power chords on it, but only the A and D strings if you wanted to. In bar 19, we have a G5 chord that is merely the third fret of the E string with his little finger, the third fret of the B string with the ring finger, and the third fret of the E string with your face with the middle finger and get it to contact the A string.
Chorus – How to Play Life is A Highway on Guitar
The first verse of the chorus is the same as the second line we played. The second line of the chorus is essentially identical, but it begins with a small lick. It starts with the fifth fret of the A string, then the third fret of the D string, returning to the fifth fret of the A string, the third fret of the A string, and two B flat power chords. The remainder of the line is the same.
Then it will return to the verse, duplicate the verse, perform the bridge, and then the two lines of the chorus, except this time it will play the entire two lines twice. Then there’s a brief middle eight with just a few chords. And it repeats; thus, Gm7 is your second finger on the third fret of the E string and your ring finger across the D, G, and B strings at the third fret.
BB7 Chord:
The next chord is a Bb7 chord, which is played by placing your first finger on the first fret of the A string, your second finger on the second fret of the G string, your third finger on the third fret of the D string, and your little finger on the third fret of the B string. Then there’s the Dm7 chord, which is your first finger over the first frets of the E and B strings, followed by your second finger on the second fret of the G string, and you also play the open D string.
Then, in bar 31, we have a C chord, which is merely your first finger on the first fret of the B string, second finger on the second fret of the D string, and ring finger on the third fret of the A string. It just plays the first four bars, which are bars 28, 29, 30, and 31. It replicates those, and we have another C bar in the following.
First Part of the Solo – How to Play Life is A Highway on Guitar
This solo starts on the 13th fret on the B string, and we’re going to bend up a note and strike it five times. And then, while it’s up into the following bar, you’re going to play it and drop it back to and draw it down to the 10th fret on the B string, 13th fret on the G string, 10th fret on the B string, and then 13th fret on the G string dragging off to the 12th and 10th fret of the G string.
On to the following line, we’ll play the 7th fret of the G string, bend it higher tone, and then hammer on to the 7th fret and back to the 5th fret. In the following bar, we have a lick that is the 10th to 12th frets of the D string and the 10th to 12th frets on the G string sliding up straight to the 14th fret of the G string. Therefore, the 13th fret on the B, the 15th fret on the B, the 13th fret on the E, and the 15th fret on the E bend straight up to the higher tone. Except for the last note you’re holding on to, all those are staccatos.
Second Part of the Solo – How to Play Life is A Highway on Guitar
Keep it on in the following line, followed by another one, two, three, four, like falls from the 15th fret on the high E. Then, in the next bar, we get the 13th fret of E, the 15th fret of B, two 13’s of E, the 15th fret of B, the 13th fret of B pulling off to the 13th fret, and the 15th fret of G. Following that, we have 13th fret on the E to 14th fret on the G, then 13th fret on the B, then a rapid slide from 14 to 12 on the G string, and lastly 10th fret of the G string.
The following line has the 12th fret of the G twice, followed by the 10th fret of the G, and finally the 13th fret of the B string, 10th of E, 10th of E, 10th of E, 13th of B pulling off to the b10th fret of the B. Then the 13th fret of the G pulls off to the 12th and 10th frets. Then the 12th fret of the G pulls off to the 10th fret again, the 12th fret of the D string pulls off to the 10th fret, the 12th fret of the A string, and then a quick hammer on in the next bar from the 10th fret of the D to the 12th fret.
Conclusion
You’ve taken up a guitar and tentatively played through Life Is A Highway. What happens next? You may keep hunting for guitar tabs for all your favorite songs, but if you want to progress as a guitarist, you’ll need some assistance.
In this aspect, the Deplike Learning App is great! You’ll learn the chords, select a song in the app, find out how to play it, and using the interactive learning approach. You may use the Deplike Learning App to learn more songs, including Life Is A Highway, which you learned in this post.
