How to Play Guitar Songs: Kansas, Dust in the Wind - Intro and Vocal Line

When you pick up an acoustic guitar, one of the first songs that comes to mind to learn how to play is "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas. This song is a very famous one; likely you've heard it countless times on the classic rock station, and for good reason - it's an excellent song. Learning to play "Dust in the Wnd" can sound hard, even just by listening to the opening acoustic guitar. In fact, that's what many players have trouble with. That's what I'm going to try to do, break it down for you bit by bit so you can understand the rhythm and fingering patterns. Also, I'll try to teach you how to play the vocal part to Dust in the Wind on your guitar. You can either use and acoustic guitar or and electric guitar, but I'd recommend an acoustic to play the opening.

The opening guitar to Dust in the Wind is actually a simple pattern to play once you understand it. The rhythm is a collection of eighth and sixteenth notes. First I'll explain the picking technique - it's a repeating pattern. First, you should know how most players refer to guitar strings - guitar strings are referred to starting from the bottom string, which is the high E string. They call this the first string, the second guitar string is the B, third is G, up to sixth string, which is the low E.

The strings in the opening to Dust in the Wind are played in this order: 2/5, 4, 3, 5, 2, 4, and 3, then it repeats the pattern. The notes of these strings are B/E, D, G, A, B, G, D. Because of the first pseudo-chord, it makes plying this part with a pick virtually impossible, and a pick really doesn't sound right with this acoustic guitar opening anyway. When you play the opening to Dust in the Wind on guitar, you should use your fingers.

I use a variation on the PINA fingerpicking pattern for this song. The traditional method is that each finger is designated to a string - your ring finger plays the first guitar string, middle plays the second one and your index finger plays the third string, whilst your thumb plays the other three strings. I let my index finger play the third and fourth strings.
So, just get your guitar out and practice the above pattern (B/E, D, G, A, B, D, G) slowly at first without pressing any frets. Keep playing the pattern until you can get it down without having to think about it and can play it at the tempo of the song - you'll likely need to listen to Dust in the Wind to learn how to play the opening up to tempo.

The rhythm sounds a little tricky at first. It's composed of offbeat sixteenth notes. When you count musical notes when playing any musical instrument, the notes are subdivided into syllables: "One ee and ah two ee and ah three ee and ah" etc, where each syllable is a sixteenth note. The rhythm to Dust in the Wind's introduction is "One and ah two ee and ah Three and ah four ee and ah" and then it repeats throughout the song.

You'll notice that every other beat (one and three) is an eighth note. On these notes, your chord positioning will change. Let's look at the chord positions to the intro to Dust in the Wind.

First, you have the C chord, from which you play the string pattern I described above. This is played with the first five strings only, and if you want to use it as accompaniment to the melody you can. On beat 3 of the first measure, the chord switches to Cmaj7, then Cadd9, then back to C. The next four chords are Asus2, Asus4, Am and Asus2 again.

This pattern is repeated twice for the intro, then you play a G/B chord to lead into the verse. Here are a few of the guitar chords just for reference, written in EBGDAE format, where numbers are frets, 0 is an open string and x is a muted string:

C: 01023x
Cmaj7: 00023x
Cadd9: 03023x
Asus2: 0022xx
Asus4: 0322xx
Am: 0122xx
G: 300023 or 330023
G/B: x3002x

Now, here's a brief chord structure to back the verse in Dust in the Wind - these lyrics are just for reference purposes only, I don't own them, etc.

I (C)close (G/B)my (Am)eyes....(G) only for a (Dm)moment and the (Am)moment's gone
It (C)slips (G/B)aw(Am)ay...(G)passed before my eyes in (Am)curiosity...

That same basic melody holds up throughout the entire song. I have yet to learn the violin solo, but I'm working on that. REally, this song is meant to be played with two guitars, one doing the acoustic melody and another one playing chords.