Hey Jude Guitar Lesson For Beginners - Easy Chords and Strumming

Hey everybody. In this lesson video, we're going to be doing hey Jude by the Beatles, which is an amazing song. Can't wait to learn it with you guys. Let's get started.

Now this song is actually a relatively easy song for beginners. It's using really simple chords. D, A, A7, G. So really great for beginners. I'll show you how to do kind of a simplified strumming and also our more, you know, beginner intermediate strumming if you want to get into it a little bit more. Before we get into the actual lesson video, I just want to say thank you to some of the students, my YouTube students who've given donations. Sandra Grimes, James Burke, Richard Simon, thank you guys so much for your donations. I really appreciate it. I put a lot of time into these videos. Thank you so much. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Let's get into the verse and the strumming. So the strumming pattern, we're just going to use the same strumming pattern throughout the entire song. So. So the simplified strumming pattern, if I just played a D chord so I'm on D major would just be 1, 2, 3 and 4.

And 1, 2, 3 and 4 and down, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, up.

And you can do that for the entire song. If you want to spice it up a little bit more, you can throw a 16th note in there and it would sound more like this. Again, I'm on the D chord.

It's going to be 1, 2 and A.

1, 2 and A 3, 4 and A. Down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up.

So that is a more kind of like beginner intermediate strumming pattern that you can use again from the beginning to the end, all the way through on this song. If you're interested in learning a bit more about strumming patterns, make sure to check out my beginner guitar course where I go through lots of beginner and intermediate level strumming patterns. So the verse, there's really no rhyme or reason to the chord progression. We've got a D, an A major, an A7, another D. Then we go G, D, A D. So we got this eight chords and then fortunately it does repeat after that. So It's D, A, A 7, D, G, D, A D. Alright. And if you don't know A seven, it's very easy to go from A to A seven because all you have to do is lift up your middle finger so A.

So if I play through that verse we've got.

Remember a letter into your heart. Then you can start to make it better.

Really low for me. So that is kind of how the verse goes. And it's. This is a piano song again. A lot of Beatles songs are piano, especially the ones written by Paul.

So just go nice and slow and get that hand, the wrist. We want the wrist to be relaxed. We don't want to like. We don't want to be digging into these. We have. This is a gentle song, so be gentle with your pick. And if you're finding you can't be gentle with your pick, use a lighter pick.

But it's down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down.

And that was the. That's the 16th note pattern. If you guys are enjoying this video, make sure to give me a like comment below. And don't forget to subscribe to the channel. So once we get through the verse, the next section is the refrain and we have a little bit of a split measure. And of course this refrain doesn't really. Well repeats a little bit. But because of that split measure it doesn't repeat. So let's talk about what happens in the refrain next. So the refrain starts on D7, which means we're going from a D major chord.

To a D7 to start the refrain. It's kind of like a weird transition if you've never done that before. It's D to D7, so you might want to practice that transition to small, smooth that out. But the chord Progression starts with D7, G major, E minor, A7 and D. Now for A7. Since I'm coming from E minor.

I'm not going to adjust my whole hand. I've already got my second finger on the top part of the A7 chord. I'm just going to use my third finger to grab the second string at the second fret. Little bit different because usually we would have the first finger and the third finger. But here I'm using the second and third. So I'm adjusting the chord because I'm coming out of an E minor chord and it's easier. Let me just show you that on a close up real quick. So here I am, I'm on E minor and you can see this finger is already in place. So why move my whole hand? Guitarists are lazy. Alright, so keep it simple. Lift up the first finger and just put down the third finger down and you've got A seven. Instead of having to move, usually we would make it this way. That's what we did before when we went from A to A7, but going from E minor, just a little bit easier to do it this way. So once you go to that A7, we have D. And then the pattern repeats a little bit. We have D7, G, E minor, A7, D. And then at the very end there's kind of like this tag where it's a half measure of D7.

And a half measure of A7.

And because I'm going from D7 to A7, I'm also going to use the second and third finger. It's just all I'm doing is taking this shape of the D and I'm moving it up one string each. Why move any more than you have to? It goes like this.

And then he.

Up D. Jude gotta hit the right note. So again we got that D7.

2, 3, 4. Hey Jude okay, we're going right back.

Into D and then two. Don't let me down.

Then we got A seven back to.

D. Now the second verse is shorter. G to D and then to the A A and then we end on D. Alright? So the second verse is a little bit different in the progression than the first verse. And then the next part is once again, it's the refrain where we go from D into D7. Okay. And we go through that whole part and then there's another verse and then we get to the very end of the song. Which is the best part of the song. You guys know what it is? It's the. The na na na part. All right? Everyone loves that part. So the chords are going to change. We actually change keys here. So we're not just sticking to D A's and G's. There's actually going to be a C chord that comes in which hasn't come in in the song before, which gives this section a totally different feel. So the chord progression for this song is D, C, G and D. And we're going to just use the same, you know, the same strumming patterns. I'm going to use the 16th note one because I'm. That's what's most in my muscle memory. So we have Na.

Na na na na.

Na na na na hey Jude.

And then we just repeat it again as many times as you want to. It's really fun.

Na na na na Then we go to G. Na na na na hey Jude.

And this is where they just start going crazy and screaming.

Da da da da da da da da da da da da.

And yes, you can start improvising with your strumming at that point. If you want to. I'm not going to go over what I was doing there. I don't even know. It was just muscle memory at that point. A lot more up strums came in at that point. I just want you guys to keep it simple. That's why this is a beginner song. But you can see. So we're just going through the verses through refrain. Those are the two sections of the song. Finally, with this outro, with the na na na. And you can do that as many times as you want, especially if you're playing live for an audience. If they're really into it, go through it a few times. People love singing those na na parts. I know. I love to sing them. Well, there you have it. That is hey Jude by the Beatles. I have a lot of other Beatles songs in my playlist if you want to pop over. I'll put the Beatles playlist if you want to see some more songs. YouTube's also going to suggest another video that you might like. Hopefully I will see you guys in another lesson video. Thanks so much. Have a great day, everyone.