Stick Season

Why this song

Stick Season is one of the most-played beginner guitar songs to come out of the 2020s indie folk wave. The arrangement is exactly the same four chords beginners always use (G, D, Em, C), just with a capo on fret 2 to land in Noah Kahan’s original A major key.

That capo position is the thing worth understanding. With it, you are playing the song in its actual key (A major: A - E - F♯m - D), the one matching the recording, but the shapes under your fingers are still the same friendly four you already know from a dozen other songs.

How to practice it

Capo on fret 2. Metronome at 116 BPM.

The progression loops G - D - Em - C through the verses, and the chorus follows the same skeleton. So once you have the verse, you have the chorus.

The strumming pattern is the standard down-down-up-up-down-up. One bar per chord. The song’s energy comes from keeping the pulse driving forward, so don’t let the strumming hand stop between chords.

Common snags

G to D is the most common stumble. Both are three-finger shapes but they share no fingers, so the hand has to lift and reset between them. Practice that change in isolation: hold G clean, lift, place D clean, strum, switch back. Twenty reps a day for a week and it stops feeling like two separate moves.

Em to C is friendlier. They share no fingers but the hand position barely moves: middle finger drops from D string fret 2 (Em) down to D string fret 2 (C, same string and fret), and only the index and ring finger reorganize.

If you don’t have a capo yet, you can play the chords without one. The song will sound a whole step lower than the recording, but the practice of clean four-chord changes is the same.

When you have it

Once Stick Season is steady, you have the same beginner skill that unlocks half the modern indie folk songbook. Stand by Me uses the same four chords slower at half-time soul tempo, and our list of more songs in this chord vocabulary is grouped by exactly which shapes each one needs.