Hi guys, Andy Crowley here again and welcome to day seven of this 10 day guitar starter course.
Now at the start of this course, I let you in on the secret that most popular songs
don't really use many chords.
And in this lesson we're looking at the most common order
and the most common four chords that happen in a song.
Now there's a viral Youtube video by a band called 'The axis of awesome'
who are a comedy rock band and basically they say that they can play every pop hit of the last 50 years
with the same four chords.
This is something they call a four chord song.
Now as a beginner it's pretty useful to be able to play four chords and be able to play a lot of songs.
Like nearly 50 songs just by the same chords in the same order.
And that's basically what we're going to cover in this video, exactly how to play that four chord song.
With what I call Oasis style chords.
These are chords that are all in the key of G and are all pretty easy changes for the amount of chords that we have.
We're also going to cover the most common strumming pattern
that has ever existed for any kind of up tempo popular songs, which these are.
So let's get straight in for a close up and have a look at how to play a four chord song.
So the first chord we're going to go for is this way of playing a G chord.
Now you may be more familiar with a G which is just played with the first three fingers.
one, two, three like this and no little finger.
But I'm going to encourage you to use your third and little finger here on the thinnest two strings.
Which on my acoustic look like cheese wire.
And the thickest four strings are bronze colored.
Because these two fingers are going to stay down for every chord in this song.
Which makes for much easier changes and is a whole style of playing guitar
that's going to sound really great.
So we have our first finger second fret of the fifth string.
Middle finger third fret of the thickest E string.
And then third and little finger on the thinnest two strings also at third fret.
Which on my guitar has a dot, one, two, three.
And we call this an 'all fingers G'.
I sometimes call it an Oasis G as well, we"ll cover why in a second.
The second chord we're going to need is a Dsus4.
So this is the D chord we've covered so far in this 10 day course.
But we're going to keep the third and little finger down the entire time.
And just move our first finger to here.
When we do that, we just try and strum the thinnest four strings.
But this makes a much easier change between the two really common chords.
G
and D
It sounds great when we start on the G chord.
So G
Middle finger lifts off and stays off, first finger moves to second fret of the third string.
And again we need to keep all the fingers right on their tips
kind of like a claw hand, not too flat.
The third chord we're going to play is an E minor, but we're going to keep
the third and little finger down, so this is our normal E minor
that we covered in a previous day on this course.
And third and little finger stay down like this.
Now this is a tougher chord just from a stretch point of view.
But most people can do it when they first try it.
And as soon as I play that you may recognise that this is the first chord in the song 'Wonderwall'.
by 'Oasis'.
And because each one of these chords has such a different name you know E Minor 7
Dsus4 and the G chord, it doesn't really have a name with the four fingers so we just call it
a four finger G, or an all fingers G.
I nickname all of these Oasis style chords because they're all used in the song 'Wonderwall'.
So as a recap, we have G
keep the third and little finger down when we change.
Dsus4, no middle finger down, first finger here.
E Minor 7, but it's an E Minor with your third and little finger down, all six strings.
And then finally a Cadd9 which is our G major shape
but we move your first two fingers down one string.
So that makes for a much easier change between G and C.
And it's a fairly straightforward change between each one of these chords.
One more time in the order we're going to need them in, here is a G
Dsus4 no middle finger down
third and little finger still there.
E Minor
and Cadd9
And for short we can just say G, D, E Minor, C.
Once we know using this method keeping the third and little finger down.
Now this is the first time we use your third and little finger all the time, so
they may stay down for quite a while so do relax them
and possibly just touch the string, while you're sort of practicing the changes in between.
Don't have to press down as hard as possible
unless you're strumming.
So you can kind of relax and go through the motions
to get used to those chord shapes if they are new for you.
So I'm now going to do a quick demo of this four chord song
just to give you a jist of how this is going to sound and what we're going for song wise.
So we'll start on the G chord.
And I'll just have a quick sing through the first few songs so you get the idea.
So the first song in this four chord song is 'You're beautiful' by James Blunt.
My life is brilliant
My love is pure
I saw an angel
Of that I'm sure.
Second song.
People killing, people dying, children hurt can you hear them crying?
Can you practice what you preached?
That's 'Where is the love?'
We have
Forever young
I wanna be forever young
'Forever Young'
I won't hesitate no more, no more
It can not wait, I'm yours
'I'm yours' by Jason Mraz.
They all have this same movement behind them, let's just do a couple more.
Country roads, take me home
to the place I belong
Oh I can't live
With our without you
'With our without you' by U2.
So some very different songs there
and hopefully that's allowing you to peek behind the curtain and see what's going on here with songs.
The same chords, but it's the lyrics over the top and how we use them that's the real difference.
Now I'll just say a couple of things at this point before we move on.
Not all these songs are in the original key, so if you try and play them along to the original, it may not work.
But most beginner song books change the key of the song to make it easier for you to play.
So that you are using chords that a beginner would be able to play and that's exactly what we're doing here.
So G, Dsus4, E Minor 7 and a Cadd9 are the easiest way to play the chords that we need for these songs.
And they sound great if you're just singing along, maybe at a barbecue or a family gathering.
Or if you just want a play and sing, and kind of work out how to play over these songs.
Or you know someone else who sings and you can have a jam along with them
and you can keep these four chords going.
So I'll kind of talk you through exactly how to do that.
But let's look at a cool strumming pattern now so that we know exactly how to play these songs
and make the most out of it.
With the most common strumming pattern ever.
So of course the easiest strumming pattern to do for any song is just four strums on the beat.
We need each one of these chords to last for one bar.
So G, 2, 3, 4
Dsus4
E Minor
and Cadd9
That's the easiest way to do it, if you do struggle with this strumming pattern you can always do that.
But the most common strumming pattern ever by far is
Down Down Up, Up Down
Now to nail this stumming pattern, we need to miss out one down strum.
Which feels very weird, but the only real rule with strumming
is to keep your hand moving at the same rate all the time and just catch the downs or ups that
you happen to be doing, because you need to do that rhythm.
So rhythm wise we definitely need it to be one, two, and three and four.
one two, and, and four
Down, Down Up, Up Down
ba, ba ba, ba ba
And you see there I had to do a loop to miss out beat three.
Down, Down Up, Up down
To make this sound, I'm just pressing my strings really lightly
so I'm not touching the fret board, just muting them.
And if we do that on a G chord now, it sounds like this.
And if we did that for each of the chords.
We'd have
So let's look at that together, dead slow, starting from the G chord.
Play along with me if you can in two, three, four
Down, Down Up, Up Down
Dsus4
Down, Down Up, Up Down
E Minor 7
Down, Down Up, Up Down
Cadd9
Down, Down Up, Up Down
If you're still having problems at that point, we need to mute the strings, or just stay on one chord
And really quiet this rhythm, really make sure it's automatic.
Strumming guitar is done with your arms, you need to train it, you need to train the skill.
So Down, Down Up, Up Down
And once you've got it, try not to think about it at all.
pum pum, pum pum, pum
Think about the rhythm, not the hand motion, just keep your hand motion moving.
And let's keep that going on a G chord now, so G chord.
Down, Down Up, Up Down
one, two and, and four
If it stopped happening, just join in again.
In one, two, three, four
Down
So that's the strumming pattern, if you want the chord sheet and all the songs available
for this four chord song idea,
click the link in the description to my website and they're all written out, exactly all the lyrics
so you can kind of play through this four chord song in the fashion that I'm demoing here.
But let's have one final play through together as the last thing that we do in this particular video.
And let's start on our G chord as always.
And I will count you in nice and slowly, we'll play first and then I'll sing over it.
If you drop out and come back in, that's totally fine, just do what you can
and remember you can just strum four down strums
per bar if you want.
Or even once per chord.
Totally fine, do what you can.
And the skills will come once we train them over time.
So from the G chord, play along now in two, three, four
And here we go.
My life is brilliant
My love is pure.
I saw an angel
of that I'm sure
People killing, people dying, children hurt, can you hear them crying?
Can you practice what you preached, could you turn the other cheek?
Forever young
I wanna be forever young
Keep it going, three, four
I won't hesitate no more
No more, it can not wait, I'm yours
Lipstick stains on the front lobe of my left side brains
Keep it going
If I could, then I would
I'll go wherever you will
And can you feel?
the love tonight
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong
I'm your biggest fan I'll follow you until you love me.
Papa, paparazzi
I can't live with or without you
Pictures of you, pictures of me hung upon your wall for the world to see
And she will be loved
Pause there.
Now in this particular lyric sheet and the song that we're going for
this is where they say something called 'double time'.
Double time just means basically half the amount of time on each chord really.
But it means that everything is kind of therefore sped up by twice the amount.
If we're doing that, we can not do this strumming pattern
we just want to do two strums per chord really, it does mean super quick chord changes.
But it means you can go for a whole bunch more songs
because of the chord sequence we're now going for.
So if we give it a quick demo, we need two strums of each chord
one, two, three, four
Same sequence, but just two strums per chord, so two beats of each chord.
And then we have this whole other bunch of songs that I'll kind of sing over now and if you can keep up with the strumming
please play along with me and let's have a jam now.
And then you can have a go at this in your own time.
So two strums for each chord in two, three, four.
One, straight to D, Dsus4, E Minor straight to C keep it going
G, G, D
E Minor
and we have
When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
That was 'Let it Be' by the Beatles, pretty cool song.
'No woman no cry' by Bob Marley.
No woman no cry
and also
I come from a land down under, one for the Ozzies watching.
Take on me
Take me on
At that point he goes really high in the song, I'm not going to do that bit
but try and keep it going, When I come around
'When I come around' by Green Day.
When I come around
And that same chord sequence, when repeated
it's also a lot of other songs.
Save tonight.
Fight the break of dawn, come tomorrow
Tomorrow I'll be gone
If I were a boy
I think I would understand
'If I were a boy' by Beyoncé.
And we'll leave it there, you get the idea guys so
hopefully that's something that you've enjoyed, thank you so much for watching, as I say
all those songs and a kind of break down and a few hints and tips are on the website
link is in the description below.
And that's the end of day seven of this kind of beginner starter course for guitar.
Join me for day eight tomorrow, where we'll be looking at our first scale,
the best scale to look at for acoustic guitar and learn in a little riff with that scale
so it's not just the scary scale that we're learning and a boring scale.
We're going to learn a song straight after it, and also check out
you know, if this was a little tricky for you or you think there is something else you can improve on
please check out the previous days in this ten day course.
Where you'll kind of learn all the skills that will get you up to this level.
And should be able to get you playing guitar in ten minutes a day, and that's the idea of it.
Thank you so much for watching, please subscribe if you like what I do.
And I'll see you tomorrow for day eight, take care of yourselves guys, thank you very much for watching
and bye for now.