Hey there, we're ready to learn The Wonder of You. A song made famous by Elvis
Presley. I'll show you an easy version and then I'll show you some ways we can
spice it up a bit. Let's do this. When no-one else can understand me When everything
I do is wrong
You give me hope and consolation You give me strength to carry on
And you're always there to lend a hand In everything I do That's the wonder The wonder of you
Hey there, I'm Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar Success. The Wonder of You is one of
those all-time Elvis classics. Now i like to use this song with guitar students
because it's a great example of a common chord progression. Most of the song
consists of 4 chords in this order G, E minor, A minor and D. In music speak
this is a 1 2 6 5 chord progression. I'm gonna start out by showing you the
chords then I'll go ahead and strum through the chords and give you an idea
how the words and the chords fit together. Well add a little strum and
then put it all together. Now the first chord we'll be using is a G chord and
I'm gonna use a version that's a 3 finger with my pinky. Now that's
my second favorite form of G. My first favorite form is this fourth finger
version but you'll see in a minute why I'm using this version. It has to do with
switching to the other chords. The second chord is an E minor and you'll see it's
a nice easy switch from this G to the E minor.
I can even leave my second finger there and just put the third figure right next
to it on that 4th string 2nd fret. So from G 3rd finger on the 6th string 3rd
fret, second finger on the 2nd fret 2nd string and the pinky is over here on the
1st string 3rd fret. Now I leave the 2nd finger there and just put the third
finger on the fourth string 2nd fret right next to it. The next chord is A
minor and this again is a nice easy switch because I'm just gonna move these
2 fingers over a string. When I say over actually to the higher strings
closer to the 1st string. Now I'm on the 4th and 3rd strings and then put the
first finger down on the 1st fret of the 2nd string and finally we're going to a
D chord. I am going to switch around a bit to make the D chord and this is a
typical folk style D chord. So these are the 4 chords that make up this common
chord progression. We go from the G, to the E minor, now to the A minor and
then to the D chord. Now try that with me. This is a great exercise to practice so
strum your G chord. If you want to do a different version of G that's perfectly
fine, now to E minor. Notice my second finger stayed right where it was.
Now to the A minor move over - first finger down and to the D chord.
Again, one more G, E minor, A minor and to D.
Okay, that's the basic progression. Now let's put it together with the words. I'm
gonna call this an easy version because I'm not gonna use that G7 that you saw
in the beginning. Also I'm going to show you a couple other little things to
spice it up after we do this. Start with your G chord. Strum 2 times
to start. You'll see later on we're gonna do one strum on some of the chords. Here
we go, hit it. When no-one else can understand me - A minor
Now the A minor - And everything I do is to D now repeat that. Back to G. You give me
and consolation. E minor, same progression. A minor. You give me strength to
carry on. Now we're gonna do a few measures of G
Stay on G. Again. Okay, now there's a couple more chords that we're going to include in
the basic or easy version. There is a C chord in there and you'll see this C
chord is very easy especially from the A minor. You just move your third finger
over here to the fifth string third fret. So you might want to practice just going
from A minor to C. The other two chords are pretty easy. We've got that E minor
already. Now we're gonna change at one point to E7. To do that, you put your
first finger down on the first fret of the third string and you take your third
finger off the fourth string. That makes an E7 chord. So you've got the C
chord. You've got your E7 chord
along with the G, E minor, A minor and D. Now I'm going to go ahead and map it out for
you with the words. You can follow along or you can watch and then come back and
try it later. That means I'm just going to strum the chords and sing along a
little bit with it so you can hear where the words fall with the chords. Start
with the G and I'll do 2 strums to start with on each chord. Later it'll be
one strum a chord you'll see. Here we go. When no one else can understand me
A minor - and everything I do is wrong. Now we're gonna do that progression
again G. You give me love and consolation. A minor You give me
strength to carry on. Now we're gonna do a bunch of G. Here we go. And you're always there to again - G
Now its 1 C. 1D and E minor and E7. That's the - back to C - the wonder, strum to D. That's the wonder, the wonder of you.
That's the entire song except for the little parts in between that connect one verse
chorus to the other. So it's hard to distinguish on this song the verse and
the chorus. They are kinda all together and it repeats that same pattern over again
from the beginning. Let's add some strumming to it. Now there's nothing
wrong with that straight down strum. As a matter of fact, if you're just learning
the song that's what I would do. Map out the chords and sing along with it
and get the hang of where the chords change. But when you're ready, we're gonna
add a little more spice to the strum. Instead of straight down twice I'm going
to go three little strums in place of each of those one down strum so it
sounds like this - 1 2 3
I often count it like this 1 da da - 2 da da - 3 da da 4 da da and so on. Now you want
to hit kind of lightly. You don't want to bang away like that
and I'm putting a little extra emphasis on the very first one so of each of the
three just like this 1 2 3 buts its subtle. Don't worry if you don't get that first
I would encourage you just to go straight down and over time add a little
more feeling to it. We we call it accent on the 1and the 2
da 2. Try it with me just make your G chord anyway you want for now. We're
gonna `1 da da - 2 da da like that. Ready hit it 1 da da, 2 da da, 3 da da 4 dada. Okay, yeah. You can do this.
I wanna give you the option to add a few upgrades, These are fairly simple and
completely optional, Please do not stress over this. I'm doing D chord but
occasionally when I plays a song. There's a place to add a d7 and I'm gonna show
you exactly what they do right now but I'll show you when we go to play the
whole song. A D7 looks like a D only its kinda up side down in a way
instead of this note it's this note here to make that I have to put the first
finger on the second string first fret now the second and third fingers can go
on each side on that second fret like the D. Here's the D chord and the D7. Now
you'll notice it actually is even a little easier to follow the
progression with the D7 because the first thing you can stay right there and just move
these 2 fingers over. If you decide to use D7 all the time instead of D it
works, it sounds great or you can vary it a little bit and add some variety to it.
The other changes I'm doing the G chord but there's a place where I do a long G
where I do half a regular G and half a G7. The G7 makes it feel like
it's getting ready to go to the next chord that's some tension I like that.
Now this G7 is a bit of a stretch and for some people it's really hard. You can
also make a usable chord by just taking off that third finger and leaving the
second finger right there on the second fret fifth string and the first finger
on the first string first fret. That actually makes a G7/B. It means the
B's in the bass note. Now I don't want this open note to sound here so I'm
actually just slightly touching it with my second finger deadening it out. Sounds
complicated but it's actually it's kind of hard not to deaden it out really. I'll
leave it up to you if you want to try that
G7, the G7/B or just stick with G the whole time. Okay, it's time to put it
all together now. If you haven't already be sure to download the lyrics and the
chords. There'll be a link that you can get over to my blog page and do that. Go
ahead and get your guitar out. Make a G chord to start. You'll see where I add
the G7, the D7 and you'll also be able to follow along on the music. When no one else
can understand me When everything I do is wrong
You give me hope and consolation You give me strength to carry on
And you're always there to lend a hand In everything I do That's the wonder The wonder of you
Into the next verse, here we go. And when you smile the world is brighter
You touch my hand and I'm a king Your kiss to me is worth a fortune Your love
for me is everything. I guess I'll never
know the reason why
You love me as you do That's the wonder The wonder of you
Okay, our time is coming to an end for now. Did you learn something today? If you
did go and subscribe to my YouTube channel right now. And if you want
exclusive lessons and tips, go ahead over to my blog tomasmichaud.com and sign
up for my newsletter, it's free. Now I'm gonna turn it over to you. Which of those
forms of the G chord are you gonna use for this song? Do you like that 3 finger
G with the pinky that I'm using? Or do you prefer a different form? And how
about that strum did that seem easy or does it seem like it was pretty tough? Or
do you prefer a different strum altogether? Let me know in the comments
below, right now.