Easier Torn Guitar Lesson - No Barre Chords!

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. We're going to be doing a 90s classic, torn by Natalie Imbruglia. This is an amazing song. I was teaching it to some students a few weeks ago, and I was like, I have to do this on YouTube because I love 90s music. Now, the cool thing about this is the strumming pattern. Now, I've gone and I've updated this version so that you can use a capo and eliminate all the bar chords. All right? So it makes it a little bit easier to play. And that's the version you're going to see on my website, laurenbateman.com so we're going to take a capo, and we're just going to put it on the fifth fret of our guitar, which means all of the chords are going to be what we call relative to the capo. So if I say play a C chord, you're going to play a C chord as if this is the third, second, and first fret. Okay. Just in case you've never used a capo before. Hopefully if you're watching this video, you have. All right, so I've got the capo at the fifth fret, which means we're going to eliminate all the bar chords except for an F chord. So if you know a bar chord, it's going to be much easier to play an F bar chord because we're in the middle of the guitar where the strings are a bit easier to press. But if you can't do that, you can still always use the F major 7. Okay. So other chords we have in the song, A minor, C, E minor, G. My four favorite chords. And then we, like I said, we do have that F chord that's going to come in, but you can always use the F major 7 chord as an alternative.

So first things first, we're going to talk about the strumming pattern. Okay. And if you stick around to the end of this video, I'm going to show you a little bit more intricate pattern that you would use on this song. But for right now, we're just going to keep it simple. So the pattern we're going to use is what we call a 16th note pattern, which I consider a little bit more intermediate, but it's really no different than playing eighth notes. And we're alternating between down and up, down and up. Except we're just counting instead of counting 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And we're counting 1e and a, 2e and a, 3e and a 4, e and a. Okay. But we're still alternating down, up, down, up, just as you would on an eighth note. Okay, so this strumming pattern, I'm looking at it here is one E and a two.

So it's down, up, down, up, down.

Okay, so that's the first part. So if I play my C chord, it's going to be the first chord. It's going to be down, up, down, up, down already Sounds like it.

Down, up, down, up, down.

Okay. Even if you don't know it's one E and a two, just say down.

Up, down, up, down.

One E and a two.

Okay, so that's the first half of our strum. It's just a down, up, down, up down. Okay, not that hard. The tricky part is we come in on an up strum. We come in on the ah before three. That can be the tricky part for people. But if you didn't do that, it would just be one E and a two and then three E and a four. Okay, that's the simplest version. One E and a two and then three and a four. What we're gonna do is we're gonna add one more up before the down. So it's gonna be one E and.

A two, a three e and a four. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down.

Just a little bit different. Again.

Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

So now let's try picking up the tempo. So it's going to be down, up.

Down, up down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, up down, up, down, up, down.

Ready?

So you can kind of already hear this song if I put some chord movement behind it. Ready?

Now what was I doing there? I was just playing a C chord twice. Okay. And then I played an E minor chord twice. And then I chose to play an F bar chord twice. But again, you could play F major 7. It'll just have a little bit more of a brighter sound. But if that's what you can do right now, that's what you can do. So that is the verses of the song. So we have that and then we play it again until we get to a pre chorus where we introduce some new chords. Now the chords aren't being played for two measures there. They're being played for one measure. So we have an A minor chord, a G chord, an E minor chord and a G chord. And this continues in to the chorus. Now this is the great thing about this song that I absolutely love is that you can use the same strumming pattern to from the beginning of the song all the way through to the end. You don't have to change anything about it. So what I want to do is I want to go through the strumming again and then I want to play through the verse, the pre chorus and the chorus section so that you have something to practice along to. And if you're interested in learning about the more percussive rhythm I might do on this song, we'll do that after the playthrough. Alright, so let's take it from the top again. I'm playing a C chord here. And when I sing and play, sometimes my hand goes on autopilot. So I might not always stick exactly to this strumming pattern, But I'm gonna try the best I can. Alright, so let's take it from the top. Let's get our strumming.

Down, down, up down up down up down up down, up down.

Ready?

Down, up down up down up down, up down, up down.

One E and A2, A3 and A4.

I thought I saw a man brought to life.

Cause warm he came around.

Like he was dign.

You showed me.

What it was to cry.

You couldn't.

Be that man I adore.

And to.

Know seem to care what your heart is for.

I don't know him anymore but nothing, where would you survive? Conversation has run dry it's what's going on nothing's quite unt I'm all out of face this is how I feel.

I'm cold and unashamed Lying naked on.

The floor Illusion never changed into something real I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect sky sun go a little late I'm already done.

So you can see There were a couple times where like I lost myself because I was focused on the singing. And the key is if you're playing something like this and you lose yourself in the middle. And that's why I leave the mistakes in, to show you that sometimes even I mess up on these things. And the key is to keep that hand moving. And I think it was the end of that first verse and I just. I just kind of hung out on the chord and kept strumming. So as long as you don't stop strumming, if you keep strumming and you keep singing, it's gonna sound fine. Okay? But even for me, you can see sometimes when I'm singing and I'm playing, I focus more on the singing. So sometimes the strumming isn't always exactly what it is. But I tried my best to try to keep it that strumming pattern. Now, the reason is because this isn't typically how I play the song. Typically, I get rid of the capo, and I would play this song as all bar chords. Okay. Eventually. Usually when I give people this song, they're getting more into the intermediate level and we're getting ready for bar chords. And the reason why, if I just take that F, okay. And I show you how I would play this song, you're gonna see why I like bar chords for this song.

Sounds totally different, right? Sounds much cooler. Especially when we get to, you know, the chorus.

Nothing's right, I'm told I'm all out of.

Okay, so you can see there's a little bit of a percussive element. What am I doing here? Okay, so first, let's just go through the bar chords. I'm playing an F bar chord, real F barre chord. Then if I were in the chorus, I would go to an A minor bar chord, which is here at the fifth fret. Okay. And it's nice because you can just slide from F to A minor. And then from A minor we go to B flat, which is right here. And now I'm gonna put my second finger back down. Because the difference between A major and A minor barre chord is you just lift up your middle finger. Okay? So you either flipping me off or you're. It's on the guitar. Okay, so we have F, A minor, E flat. Okay? So that's my verse. And the strumming pattern I'm using, I'm using a very similar strumming pattern. Let's play it on the A minor. So we're in the middle of the guitar. I'll use that B flat, since we're in the middle of the guitar. So it's an F shaped bar chord. It's the same shape as F. It's just played on the sixth fret. Okay. Just so I can show you this strumming pattern. If you want to play with it without playing all the bar chords. It's a cool skill to learn. Okay, so even if you're a beginner, you're not doing barre chords yet. Watch this because you're going to learn what's to come. And some cool stuff you can do in what. Why eventually learning barre chords is so important. So I'm using the same strum.

I'm going down, up, down, up, down.

It's the same strum, except I'm releasing the pressure on my hand to mute the strings.

Do you hear how the guitar cuts off instead of. Instead of Letting it ring. It's. Oh, how did I do that? Just. I just released the pressure. I didn't take my hand completely off the guitar, but I just. You strum the chord, and then you release the pressure. The strings will mute. Okay, So I went down, up, down, up, down. That's no different. And then I have the up, which is the before the three. I don't play the down on the three. Okay. I play up and then up, down, up, down. And every time I'm replace, or I'm lifting the pressure off the string, so.

I got down, up, down, up, down.

Lift the pressure, and then I have the first up, Lift the pressure and then up, down, up, down, and release the pressure. All right, so there's three points in the strumming pattern where I'm muting the strings. All right, after the first down, after the up, actually basically on the third beat. So there's no strum on the beat. It's a muted beat. And then after four, so it sounds like this.

So you can hear it. It has more of a hop to it, a little bit more percussive and liveliness. Let me do that again.

So it's down, up, down, up, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, up, up, down, up, down.

Ready?

Okay. So it's a really cool sound if we pick it up to speed with the song. One, two, here, Here we go.

And you can get into lots of cool percussive stuff. I teach this in my expressive rhythm course that I have. But this is the cool thing about bar chords, because.

You can kind of just slide them up and down the guitar. So I want to give you a play through. Through as I would play this song, and I. This is how they play the original. I believe the original is played all his bar chords to get this percussive. And really, you can hear the chords, they cut off very quickly when you listen to the recording again, it's pretty much the same strumming pattern for the entire song. So once you get it down, the hard part is. Is doing the bar chords. The other thing is, you know, we have an A minor chord. There's certain chords that you can play open. But again, I. I prefer to play it as all bar chords. So let's take a look at those. Right, so we have an F bar chord here. We have A minor on the fifth fret, B flat on the sixth fret. The D minor is going to be on the fifth fret. C. I like to play it as this double bar on the third fret. But you also could play it up here on the eighth fret. So it's C to D minor, you know, up to you. You know, you could put. You could play everything on this top string. I just don't think that's what they're doing because it starts getting too high.

So.

So I would opt to play the C chord on the fifth string. The D minor as a five string bar chord. Alright, so let's take it from the top. Okay, we're starting with the strumming pattern. I'm actually going to take it from the next verse, pre, chorus and chorus. So we can just move a little further into the song. But remember, strumming pattern.

Down, up, down, up down, up, up down, up down, down, up down, up down, up, up down, up down again. Down, up, down, up down, up, up, up down, up, down. One more time.

Okay, let's take it from that verse. So we got one, two, here we go. And.

So I guess the fortune teller's right.

Should have seen just what was there and that's unholy like.

You go beneath.

My veins and now I don't care I have no luck. I don't miss it all that much. So many things that I can't touch on time. I'm a lot of faith. This is how I feel.

I'm cold and I am shame Lying naked on the floor.

Illusion never change into something real. I'm wide awake and I can see. See the perfect sun. You're a little late. I'm already done.

And just so you know, it happened on a song like this or you strum a lot. Look how I was holding my pick at the end. My pick turned on the end. I tried to turn it back but I couldn't get it to turn back. But see, sometimes the pick will turn. Keep playing. Lots of cool mistakes here to show you guys. And I've been playing the guitar for a long time and this stuff still happens. It happens from time to time. And if I were in the middle of a song doing that, I would have to turn the pick. If I wanted to keep playing the song, I'm either gonna have to drop the pick and get a new one, or I'm gonna have to turn the pick in my hand. So that gave you two challenges. An easier version and a harder version. It is up to you which one you want to go with. And if you're interested in learning more about percussive strumming, I highly recommend you go check out my Palm muting video right over there. We're going to show you a really cool technique to get some cool dynamics out of your guitar.