Learned How To Play The Opening Riff Of Kansas's "Carry On My Wayward Son"

“Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more”
  --Kansas, Carry On My Wayward Son

A few weeks ago, Jeremiah, Mat, Siyu and I were driving back from one of our lunch time workouts and this song started playing on the radio.  I decided then that I was going to learn how to play the opening riff.  It sounded like it would be fun to play.

There are really only two parts to the opening, but since I haven’t being playing much lately, it took me a little while to get used to the finger dexterity to pull it off.  If you read tablature, the first part is:

e|----------------------------------------------|
B|----------------------------------------------|
G|----------------------------------------------|
D|-----------------------5----------------------|x2
A|---------3--------5-/7---7p5-3--5---5---------|
E|---5-3-5----5-3-5-----------------3---2-------|

It’s totally fun to play.  Plus, it gets stuck in your head so easily.


The second part of the riff is cool too.  Here it is in tablature form:

e|-----------------------------------------------------|
B|--------12-12--------------------14-12---------------|
G|--------12-12--------------------14-12---------------|
D|--------12-12--------5-----------14-12--------5------|x2
A|---2-2-------------5---5h7--2-2-------------5---5h7--|
E|---0-0---------5h7----------0-0---------5h7----------|

I actually learned this bit on a 3/4 acoustic which was a little uncomfortable when playing on the 14th fret.  On the Flying V, it was no problem.


This was a fun one to do.  I feel like I haven’t really gotten to play my guitar too much lately, so it was great to get a little time to learn something new on it.  Enjoy the video!

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