Learn to Play Come As You Are by Nirvana on Guitar

I have a different take on how to play this awesome song.  It was recorded with the guitars tuned down a whole step, and that obviously poses problems for guitar players who want to play along with the recording.  Tuning your guitar down a whole step will likely result in your strings buzzing like crazy unless you reset the saddle heights on your guitar, and that is a giant pain to do. You could use an app like Anytune or Transcribe! by Seventh String Software to retune the mp3 up a whole step, but then Kurt’s voice will start to sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.  That will also be no fun to play along with, so . . .

If you want to learn to play Come As You Are by Nirvana on guitar without having to retune your guitar, I have a simple solution.  You can play the riff in standard tuning, you just have to move it up to the fifth string and therefore transpose the riff up an octave.  You really don’t lose anything by doing this, especially when you play the riff along with the song – the bass adds the low end and what you are playing will still sound great.  As an added bonus, if you play the song like this, you can play open chords instead of barre chords during the pre-chorus and chorus of the song.

So, in original recording, Kurt plays F#sus4 and then Amaj.  If you play along to the song in standard tuning, you can play Esus4, which is an open chord, instead of the F#sus4 which is a barre chord.  An open G chord can be substituted in place of the Amaj chord.  Later on in the song, Instead of playing Bmaj to Dmaj, you can play an open Amaj chord to an open Cmaj chord.

The tab below is sort of a Cliff Notes version of the song – all the parts/ sections are there, but I did not tab out the whole song.