HAVE FUN STRUMMING: If It Makes You Happy Guitar Lesson

If it makes you happy.

It can't.

Be that bad.

If it makes you happy.

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, I'm going to show you how to play a great 90s classic by Sheryl Crow if it makes you happy in this guitar lesson. And we're going to go over a simple way to strum this, but I'm also going to show you how you can stick spice this up a little bit to sound more like the record.

So the great thing about this song is it's only four chords and they are all open chords, which makes it nice and easy for beginners to play. We have a G chord, we have an A minor chord, we have a C chord, and we have a D major chord. All right, so we just have G, C, D and A minor. Okay, Very, very simple open chords that we're going to start with.

Now I'm going to show you the.

Simple way to play and strum through this first, if you're more of a beginner. And then I'll show you kind of like more of a late beginner way to make the intro sound more like the song and the way you hear it on the record. But to keep it simple for this part of the lesson, we're going to start off with a simple eighth note strumming pattern. All right, so it's going to be 1, 2, 3, and 4. And. And I'm just playing a G chord here.

We've got down, down, down, up, down, up again, 1, 2, 3, and 4. And down, down, down, up, down, up.

Now we're just going to string that together and that's how we're going to play.

So for the intro, we're going to just hang out on that G chord for eight measures. Now the electric guitar is doing some other stuff that you'll hear on the record. And I'm going to show you how we can add some of that in later. When we get into the verse, we're just going to hang out on that G chord. All right, I just checked my sheet and it looks like there's seven measures of a G chord in one measure of a C chord. If you guys want to go follow along with my lesson notes, you can go over my website and check it out over there. So we're going to be hanging out on that G chord for seven measures, and then for one measure.

We'Re going to hit a C chord and then we're right back into the G chord again. We just repeat the whole thing over again. So you can see how this is a great song for Beginners because we get to hang out on that G chord a lot. So let's play through the verse and see how this is going to sound. One, two. Ready?

And.

Get that intro in. Just a little feel. Okay, here we go. Get ready.

I've been long.

A long way from here.

Put on a poncho made for mosquitoes and drank till I was thirsty again.

We went searching.

We thrift store jungles.

Found Geronimo's rifle, M.D. champagne Blue and Benny Goodman's piercing pen.

So now we're jumping into the pre chorus of the song. And this is where we start to get a little bit of chord movement. All right, we're going to hang out on that C for another measure. So we got C, same strumming pattern. Then we got a D.

Then we have a C chord.

We go back to the the D, but we're doing something different on this D chord. We're just going down, up, down. And then we're muting the guitar. So it's going to be one and two. And then you can see I'm just using my left hand. You can either use your strumming hand or your left hand to mute the strings. We're cutting them off dead. We don't want them to go. We don't want the guitar to ring. We want it to go. Okay, so just mute those strings. You can either use your strumming hand here and just tap the strings. You don't have to hit them. Or you can use your fretting hand and lay them across the strings and it will deaden the strings that way. So here's the pre chorus. It goes like this. One, two. Ready?

Okay. I made this up.

I promise you I never give up.

It makes you happy.

So you can see we deadened the strings and then it goes. If it makes you and then happy is where we start strumming again on the chorus. Again, we're not doing anything different strum wise here. We're keeping it simple. So we start on an A minor chord and then it goes C, G, D. And then the second time through it goes A minor C. And then you just hang out on that G chord again. You come right back to the G chord. So the chorus is going to sound like this. All right, If I take it from the pre chorus into the chorus, let's do both of them together. This is what it's going to sound like. So we got one. One, two, three.

Well, okay, I made this up.

I promise you I never give.

If it makes you happy.

It can't be that bad.

If it makes you happy.

Then why then are you so sad?

So then at that point you'd go right back into the verse section and you can use the same strumming pattern you've been using or you can keep going on. In this lesson, I can show you how to spice this up a little. Spice up the verses and intro so that it will sound a little bit more like the recording. So this is going to require us making our G chord in a slightly different way to. Because we have this electric guitar that you hear in the intro and it's kind of going. It's got this like D minor chord feel to it.

Okay. So there's this D minor feel, but we also have this G chord over the top. So we're kind of going to blend a G chord and a D minor chord together. I'm going to show you how that sounds first and then I'll show you how to do it. So you can see I'm making my G chord with my pinky. My third finger on the top and my second finger on the A string. Now, I will admit this is a little awkward for me because I don't usually play my G chord that way. I usually play it with, you know, my third finger on the bottom, my second and first fingers. Okay. But we're going to play it this way and you're going to see why in a second. So here we go. It's going to be one, two, Ready?

All right. So now that you can see what I'm doing, you can hear it's sounding much more like the song now. And that's why this part's not really, really beginner. This may be more like beginner because you need to have a little bit more dexterity in your fingers and you need to understand a little bit more about rhythm and timing. So this is going to be a two measure pattern. Okay. The timing of this is going to be 1, 2, 3 and 4.

And.

And 2, 3 and 4. And. Okay. So that's going to be. If I don't, you know, change chords. Yeah. If I just stay on this G chord, it's going to be 1, 2, 3 and 4. And.

And 2, 3 and 4.

And so we're letting that strum the. And after 4, we're letting that ring through the first beat of the next measure. So this is a two measure strumming pattern. Okay. Just wanted you to see that. So it's 1, 2, 3 and 4 and. And 2, 3 and 4.

And down, down, down, up, down. Up, up, down, down, up, down, up.

Okay, so that's our strumming hand. What's happening there? Now there's also going to be some chord changes that are happening on the up strum here. Okay, so we've got the up strum. We've got the G chord for the first part of the measure. On the and of four, we're going to change down to this kind of like D minor G chord. Okay. It balances. Could you just play a D minor chord? You could.

But having those extra bass notes but balances it out a lot. So that's why we're doing it this way. Okay, so it'd be 1, 2, 3, and 4. And here the bright tones come in.

The.

And on the D minor is there.

So it's 1, 2, 3, and 4. And again, 1, 2, 3, and four. And last time, down, down, down, up, down, up.

Okay, now we're gonna let this up strum ring into the next measure. And it's gonna be and 2, 3, and 4. And so you can see my fingers doing some motion here. Oh, no, what's happening? So that's why it's a little more late beginner, but it's so much fun if you can add this in. So let's take it from that D minor here. Okay, so we had. And two, three. On the up strum of. And lift this second finger up. And then on four, you're gonna hit the D string, okay. With your second finger. And then on the. And the up strum, you're gonna lift that finger and come back to one, and you're on G. Okay, let me do that again very slowly. So we've got the D minor chord. We're coming on from the up strum. So it's.

And 2, 3, and 4.

And. Okay, one more time.

And 2, 3, and four.

And so if we put the whole thing together, it's going to sound like this.

1, 2, 3, and 4.

And.

And 2, 3 and 4. And 1, 2, 3, and four.

And.

And 2, 3, and 4.

And okay, and a little bit more up to speed.

1, 2, 3, and 4. And. And 2, 3, and 4. And 1, 2, 3, and four. And. And 2, 3, and four.

And now you guys may not hear it or maybe you can. I'm muting this fifth string because it's kind of hard to do this without muting that A string. So if you're like, lauren, I'm muting a string. It's okay. And you're going to hear that ring through a little bit. I'm doing that. Okay, don't worry. On the G chord, I'm not muting it, but the other chords, I'm kind of muting that a string. So if you're hearing that, don't worry, it's totally normal. So this would be for our intro.

And a long.

Long way from here.

Put on a poncho so you can.

See how we can work this in over the lyrics. So it's a little harder to do that and sing at the same time, but it brings the song to life and it adds an element that's just like the recording. If you guys enjoyed this Sheryl Crow lesson, then I highly recommend you go check out my zombie lesson right over there. Another simple four chord song that I'm going to show you how to play through. Beginning to end, step by step. Go click on that lesson. I'll see you guys there.