Everybody Hurts Guitar Lesson by R.E.M. - Master Simple Guitar Arpeggios

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. I have an Amazing song by R.E.M. we're going to be learning how to arpeggiate chords. Now, what is an arpeggio? An arpeggio is when you play notes individually. It sounds like this.

Versus a strum, where you would play all the notes kind of simultaneously or very quickly right after each other. So with arpeggios, we're letting the notes ring out over the chords, and it gives us this really nice, almost ethereal sound, really, which works so well for this song. Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. so in this guitar lesson, I'm going to be showing you how we're going to go about picking the verses and the choruses. We're going to do them slightly differently. And then we're going to go over the bridge section of the song. But first, let's talk about the chords we're going to be using. Now, the great thing about this song is for both the verse and the choruses, we only have open chords. So even if you're a beginner, you really could play the verse and choruses of this song. So we have a G chord, we have a C chord, we have a D chord, E minor, and an A chord. Now, the great thing about this is the verse rotates between two chords, D and G, and the chorus rotates between two chords, A and E minor. So again, it's a very, very simple song until we get to the bridge. So the bridge has some bar chords, and if you're a beginner, you might want to skip that section and come back to it later. The chords we're going to need are a B minor chord and an F sharp chord. And I'm going to show you how you can go about playing those. You can, if you need easier versions and what you can do to practice that transition.

Now, students always ask me, lauren, is it better use a pick or is it better you'd use your fingers? You could finger pick this song. I'm going to use a pick because I think it accentuates the notes so much better. And I feel when I hear the tone of the guitar in the song, I think they play this on an electric guitar. It actually sounds like he's using a pick. But if you wanted to finger pick this, I will show you briefly how to do that. It's going to be the same pattern we use with the pick. So let's go over the pattern and the timing first. I'll show you how to pick it. I'll show you how to finger pick it, and then you can pick Whichever version you prefer. So let's take our first chords for our verse. Okay, so we have a six string chord, a G chord and we have a four string chord, a D chord. Okay. And the way I would recommend to make this easier to is I would play your D chord like this. And for your G chord you can use the four finger, my stuck like glue version. Because when you do that, look at that, the third finger doesn't have to move. You've got a pivot point here. Alright? So that makes just going between these two chords easier. If you want to use the regular D and G, totally fine. I'm going to be using this four finger G chord and this four fingered D chord. Sorry I said four fingers. There's only three fingers on a D chord but you get what I mean. So four finger G chord, three finger D chord. Now let's talk about the picking pattern. Alright, so whether you have a four string, five string or six string chord, we're always going to play the lowest note of the chord as our bass note. So for this G chord it's going to be the sixth string, that really thick string at the top, the E string. For the D chord it's going to be the open D string. And if we're playing a five string chord like our A that we're going to run into later, it would be the fifth string or the open A string. So the notes we're playing are a G. Okay, the note here is D. On the A chord it's going to be A. On the E minor chord it's going to be E. Okay? So we're basically playing the lowest sounding note of the chord. And with these chords it just happens to be the note that gives the name of the chord, the root note. So that's what we're going to be doing for our bass notes. Now on the verse we're going to play one picking pattern. On the chorus we're going to play a different picking pattern. I want to show you why. So let's start with the first pattern. We're going to start with the fourth string. And the strings we're going to play are 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1st, 2, 3. And I'm picking that down, down, down, down, up, up, down, down, down, down, up, up. And I'm gonna do the same thing with the G chord except it's gonna be 6, 3, 2, 1 2, 3, 6, 3 2, 1, 2, 3. And again I'm still going down, down, down, down, up, up. Okay, so that is Going to be the timing for this. Now, if you're hearing We've kind of got this sway going along. This song is in what we would call six, eight, time. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. We're counting to six, which makes it nice because there's six picks on each of these chords. Now, if you wanted to finger pick this, I'm gonna put the pick down for five seconds here. Just threw my amp on quickly so you can get a little bit more volume in the room here. So we're using the bass. It's being played by our thumb. And then we're using fingers 1, 2, 3, 2, 1. So it's thumb 1, 2, 3, 2,. 1. Thumb 1, 2, 3, 2', 1. On strings 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3. And then the same with the G chord. Thumb 1, 2, three, two, one. Okay, so that's how you can finger pick the song using just your thumb and your first three fingers. Okay, so these three fingers are going to stay down here and the thumb is going to pick which bass note it's playing. Now, if you're going to track with me, we're going to go back to the pick because there is an interesting ending. There's a transition on this verse. We're going to be doing a walk down from our verse into our chorus section. So when we're playing the verse, let's just play through a few times to get this pattern down. It's going to be 2D chords, 2G chords, 2D chords, 2G chords. All right, so we're just going to practice that pattern. And I'm going to play the walk down at the end and I'm going to show you how to do it. So ready? Here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Back to d.

To g.

Let's do that again. D twice.

Now stop. Keep going.

Then d.

And G.

Here comes the walk down.

So you heard in the middle of that, I made a mistake. And I said, keep going. Because when you make mistakes like that, keep going. Don't stop the song. Play through the mistake. You learn a lot from playing through the mistake. It also shows you that I still make mistakes sometimes. We're all human. So at the end, you heard this walk down. Okay, and what did I do? I went from a G chord.

To this F sharp, G chord, and then I hopped into an E minor chord.

Okay, so let's go through that step by step. So we're going to play one measure of the G chord fully through.

And then we're going to play half of it, we're going to go bass note, fourth string, third string. We're going to take our second finger away, move our first finger up to the second fret on the top string. That's F sharp. Okay? So this has now become, instead of a G chord, it's a G chord, but an F sharp in the bass. Okay? That's why it's called. That's why it's slash, F sharp. It's saying, play a G chord, but put this note in the bass. All right, so we're going to play sixth string, four, three. So that's the walk down.

Okay, so we have 6, 4, 3, 6, 6, 4, 3. So we're going to play a full measure of G.

Half measure of G.

Half measure of G, F sharp. And then on the ending, we're going to jump into the chorus, which is our E minor chord. So let's take that one more time. We're going to play a full measure of G, half measure of G, half measure of G. F sharp, right? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5, 6. 1, two, three, four, five, six. Now E minor.

Okay, we're going to change up the picking now in the chorus. So we're going to make the chorus very dark. I think it sounds nice dark. So we're actually going to ignore the high E string. So if you're finger picking this, what you have to do now is you kind of just got to adjust your hand. So now the first finger is going to be on the fourth string. The second finger is going to be on the G string, and the third finger is going to be on that B string. Okay. But the thumb is still playing the bass notes of the chords. Now, the two chords we have here are E minor and A. So the bass note for the E minor, as we mentioned earlier, is the E note, and the bass note for the A is the A note. So string six and then string five. And we're just going to be going back and forth between E minor and A. So if we're picking, what does that mean? That means we're going to go 6, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4.

So that has a very different feel. Then.

If you played it that way, would it be wrong? No, I just like changing it up on this chorus.

To make it a little bit darker because it's everybody hurts, Right? It's not a happy song. It's a sad, dark song. And then the A chord, we're going to go five, four, three, two, three, four, five, four, three, two thousand three, four. Okay, so back to E minor. We've got six, four, three, two, Three, four, six, four, three, two thousand Three, four. And then we have a major. Five, four, three, two, 3, four, five, four, Three, two, three, four. Okay, back to E minor.

And then back to A.

Okay, so that's how we're gonna play the chorus section. What we're gonna do now is I'm gonna play through a verse, we're gonna do a walk down, and we're gonna play through a chorus. But don't go away, because then we're gonna talk about the bridge section of the song and what we're gonna be doing there. So let's take it from the top. Okay. One, two, three.

Hey, here we go.

When the day is long.

The night.

The night is yours alone.

When you're sure you've had enough.

This life.

Will hang on.

Let yourself go.

Everybody cries.

And everybody hurts.

Sometime so you see.

At the end of that chorus what happens on that final A?

I strum real quick in mute. Because that's what they do. If you listen to the recording, that's what happens. We've got a full measure of A.

And then on the one, we strum and I mute very quickly with my fretting hand. So we're kind of cutting off the sound dead on the guitar. So once again, you probably. If you listened. There is a mistake on that walk down. But I played through it. I actually. I hit the wrong note, but it was still in the chords. This is the great thing about picking. If you hit the wrong note, it's still not a wrong note because you're holding a chord. So you're never gonna hit a bad sounding note. It wasn't the note I specifically wanted to target. I was already thinking about the E minor chord ahead, and I changed the picking pattern early. But notice I kept the timing the same.

And if I did that live, no one would notice because I didn't make a big deal out of it. So whenever you make mistakes on these songs, just keep going. If you miss a string and you hit a different string, just keep the timing the same. And it's not going to sound bad. It's going to sound good as long as you keep the timing. So let's talk about this bridge section. So this is where we get our bar chords to come in. And nobody likes bar chords. They're great. I love barre chords. They're so useful. But they are very hard to play and they're very hard to pick and have all the notes sound good. So options for this you could play a B minor chord without the bar because we're not playing this high E string. So you could just play it as a four string chord. Okay. Using four fingers. Okay. So that's that option. And then you could do the same for the F sharp minor. The only caveat to that is that you have to switch which strings you're playing. So if you wanted to use this easier version, you're going to be going 6, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3- 4, 5. And if you use the easy B minor, you're going to be going 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4. Okay? So we're trying to ignore the bottom two strings where you would have to bar. So that is an option to make it easier. If you want to try playing through this bridge section without using bar chords, I am going to use the barre chords because that is what they do in the song. And we're going to be using the same picking pattern that we used on the chorus. We're going to keep this section dark. Now we're starting with F sharp minor. And the great thing about these two chords is, is they're in the same fret. So you can just practice this a little bit. Going between the F sharp and the B minor, you'll notice the shape of these fingers doesn't change.

Okay. What's changing is where my bar finger is going. Okay. So that's the difficulty for a lot of students is getting those bars to ring out when you're picking, when you're strumming. If you have a muted string, you know, you can kind of COVID it up a little bit. But with picking, your chords have to ring through or you're gonna. It's gonna sound like this.

You know, and if you want to have like a, you know, a muted version, you could do that too. It's almost like a pizzicato on a violin a little bit. That sounds cool, but that's not what we're trying to do here. We are trying to get the notes to ring out. So we've got F sharp and then we've got B minor. Okay. And the picking pattern is going to be 6, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 6, 4, 3, 2,. 3, 4. Then 5, 4, 3, 2, three, four, five, four, three, two, three, four.

Now, the interesting about this, we now have a C chord that comes in.

Which we're going to pick just like our a chord. 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4. Then we have a G chord after that. We already know how to do that. Then we have a C chord and then we have an A minor chord. And this A minor chord does the same thing. The first time through you pick it.

And then the second time you mute. So if we play through this bridge section, it's going to be each chords twice and we're going to start on F sharp minor. Okay. We'll put the chords up here in the corner so that you can follow along. You can always follow along with the court chart on my website too. So. So we got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Don't throw your hair.

Oh.

No.

Don't throw your hand.

Here comes C.

When you feel like you're alone.

No, no, no, you're not alone.

Then you go right back into D to G, right back into the verse section. So if you really enjoyed exploring this picking pattern, check out my House of the Rising sun lesson over there. We're going to use this pattern, but I'm also going to show you a technique called a rake. Go click on that lesson over there to learn more.