How to Play Bitch by Meredith Brooks Step-By-Step

Hey guitar enthusiasts, I'm going to be doing an awesome song that I used to perform with my band all the time. It's Meredith Brooks' Bitch. It's such a great song if you are like female singer-songwriter rock. This is such a cool song. Now, uh, there are some easy chords, there are a couple bar chords. I'll show you what to do to make easier options if you're not great at bar chords. So first, let's talk about the chords we're gonna use, which is gonna be an A chord, okay, a D chord, an E chord, okay? Those are our easy open chords, A, D, E, okay? I'm gonna show you how to play it to make it sound like the record. The other two chords we have is an F-sharp minor, which is this bar chord. Horrible sounding bar chord, Lauren. That bar chord. And a B minor bar chord. Now, there are some options for this. Okay, if— because we're going to be doing a lot of down strums on this, if you cannot play bar chords, what I recommend is playing a power chord, which is the just the top 3 strings of each chord. And we're going to play it with my 1st, 3rd, and pinky. All right, so for the F#, it would be my 1st finger on the 2nd fret of the top string, and then my 3rd finger on the 4th fret of the A string, and then my pinky right below on the 4th fret of the D string. Okay, so we're going to be doing a lot of down strums so you can get like this really chunky rock sound from these power chords. Now for the B minor, it's very easy. You just move all of these fingers down one string. Okay, so we have a B5 power chord and what we— an F#5 power chord. Okay, so 2-4-4 on strings 6-5-4, and then 2, 4, 4 on strings, 5, 4, 3. Okay, so we have B and we have F sharp. Okay, so those are your easier fixes if you cannot play power chords. So I'm gonna play the full bar chords, okay, because I can. But if you cannot play the full bar chords, don't worry, you can use those power chords and it'll work out just fine. So let's talk about the strum pattern we're going to use for the interim verse. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through this song piece by piece. Each section is going to be a little bit different, but don't worry, at the end I'll do a full playthrough so that you can have something to practice along with, with me. So most of the song fortunately uses A, D, E, okay? And that's how our intro starts. So it's basically an A chord followed by an E chord followed by a D chord. So this is played in a specific timing. So the A and E chord are splitting a measure. The A chord is played on the 1 and the E is played on the 4. So it's going going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, and then the D is played on the 1 of the next measure.

Okay, so if I put that all together, it's gonna sound like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. A, 2, 3, E, D. On your own, ready?

Now I'm going to show you a quick little spice, because if you listen to the record, you kind of hear this little wah going on, which is, which is a hammer-on. Um, but I'm gonna— we're not gonna do the full hammer-on, we're just gonna use the E chord, okay, to hammer, and it's gonna sound like this. Okay, what am I doing? All right, when I do the playthrough, I'm probably just gonna keep it with the strum, but if you're someone who's interested, you want this little challenge, this little spice, you can add it in. So what I'm doing is I'm strumming some of the strings open before I even put the E chord down.

So it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, so I'm not playing anything on the 4 beat. And then on the and, you're gonna hammer down an E chord. Now, if you've never done this before, you need speed and strength to make those strings ring through. Okay, that's why I'm saying I'm just gonna play 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, the simpler way.

But if you want the challenge, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1, 2, 3.

It also means that your chord change between the E and the D chord has to be even faster.

Okay, 1, 2, 3.

But that's going to give you more of the sound that you're going to hear if you listen to the record. So this strumming pattern is used in the intro and it's used on the first verse, which makes things very simple because you're just really strumming one strum per chord. Where we pick things up is the second verse, okay? And again, we're not adding a lot of strumming, we're just adding an extra little accent in. So what we're going to do is on the A chord for second verse, we're going to go 1, 2, and, okay?

1, 2, and 3, 4, okay? 1, 2, and 3, 4.

And then the same on D.

1, 2 and 3, 4.

So it's what we call a syncopated rhythm. Uh, the down strum, or the beat, is falling on in between the downbeat. So the downbeat in music is the 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. The ands, the eighth notes in between, are what we call an upbeat. So it feels like we're almost rushing that second strum a little bit, but we're not. It's just what we call syncopated rhythm.

So again, it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

All right, if I play that a little bit more up to speed. Okay, so let's try that just on these, these first verse and the second verse. Let's just work on those first two strumming patterns on those. So we're taking from the first verse, which is "I Hate the World Today." So we go 1, 2, here we go.

I hate the world today.

You're so good to me, I know, but I can't change. Try to tell you, but you look at me like maybe I'm an angel underneath, innocent and sweet.

All right, and on those bar chords, I forgot to mention mention those bar chords, we're just strumming it once. And if you are playing the power chords, just hit those top 3 strings, it'll work just fine. Okay, second verse, we got 1, 2, 3, 4.

Yesterday I cried, must have been relieved to see the softer side. I can understand how you be so confused, I don't envy you. I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into one.

All right, what happens on the end of that verse? We have a little thing we call a crescendo. Okay, so on that last D, we're doing 1 and 2 and 3, and then on the 3, we're killing the guitar. Okay, it's a very dramatic effect which is going to bring us into this big chorus. So again, if I'm going from the first D, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3, okay? And in this case, I'm muting with my palm, okay? So I'm just resting my palm on the strings and I'm muting, killing the guitar so that there's no sound coming through. So again, if I take it from the F# minor, I can understand how you be so confused, I don't remember you, I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into So here, that just cuts the guitar off very, very quickly. And we're going to do that, um, in a couple other spots in this song as well. So, so far we've done the intro, verse 1, verse 2. Let's move into the chorus. So we're not going to do a lot different rhythmically, we're just going to add more strumming. So instead of just selectively doing down strums, we're going to do all eighth note downs. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and down down down down down down down down. Now we are going to try and maintain the accents.

So if I do the A chord, it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

Okay, so if I went to the E 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And if you're having a hard time with the accents, that's fine. Just do eighth notes.

Just 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2.

It's still gonna sound perfectly fine on that section. So real quick on the chorus: 1, 2, 3.

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint.

I got confused on what chord I was gonna play. It's okay if you're a woman and you're in your 40s and you're going through the brain fog that I'm going through. You totally understand. It's right here in front of me, F sharp minor. And it just went out of my head for a split second. But that's the cool thing about music— if you make mistakes. Okay, I'm in my 40s, I'm playing guitar for 20 years. If you don't know who I am, my name is Lauren Bateman. I specialize in helping older adults, particularly those 50 plus, learn to have fun playing their guitar. Um, so it's okay to make a mistake in music. The big thing is to play through the mistake. Okay, that's the most important part. So now we have another verse, another chorus, we have a solo. Not much is changing until we get to our bridge section. All right, but we're keeping the same rhythm, but there's something else special we're going to do here. I love this song. There's a lot of stuff rhythmically that we're doing with the guitar. So the bridge, we're going to do something called palm muting. Okay, if you can't do this right away, don't worry, just do your straight eighth notes. It's fine. We're going to keep that eighth note strumming.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

And we're going to keep that, but we're going to palm mute. Muted. It's gonna have a chunky feel to it. Okay, so what am I doing? I'm taking the fleshy part of my palm and I'm putting it just right in front of the bridge. And I, I do have a whole lesson on how to do palm muting if you really want to master the skill. But I tell people, put your palm over the sound hole if you've got an acoustic guitar, put it over the sound hole. If you're on an electric, put it over your pickups and slowly slide it towards the bridge until it beefs up like that. Okay, if the guitar rings, you've gone too far. If it's dead, there's gonna be some resonance to it. That's how you'll know you'll be in the right spot. So for this bridge, we're going to palm mute the E chords, but then when we get to the F sharp minor and the D, we're gonna let it ring. So what I mean, if I just show you— so here's the E major.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

Okay, now this bridge ends the same way that we ended that verse earlier. 1 and 2 and 3, okay, with the mute. And this time I muted it with the fretting hand. Sometimes I mute with the, you know, my strumming hand. Sometimes I mute with my fretting hand. It works both ways, whatever you feel comfortable. I think it depends on my mood and what I'm feeling energy-wise. So let's go through that bridge, okay? Because this is kind of the final part before we go through and do our whole playthrough. So let's take it from the top, okay? And again, if you can't do the palm muting just yet, just use the all-down eighth notes and work with me, and then pause the video, work on your palm muting, and you can apply it later.

Ready?

1, 2, here we go.

Just when you think you got me figured out, the season's already changing. Think it's cool you do what you do and don't try to say I'm a—

and then we go right back into our chorus and our outro. So hopefully you've made it through this far of the lesson, but don't go away just yet because we're gonna do a full playthrough from the beginning all the way through right now. 1, 2, here we go.

I hate the world today. You're so good to me. I know that I can change. Try to tell you, but you look at me like maybe I'm an angel underneath. Innocent and sweet. Well, yesterday I cried. You must have been relieved to see the softer side. I can understand how you be so confused.

I don't remember you.

I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into one.

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I do not feel ashamed. I'm your I'm nothing in between.

You know you wouldn't want it any other way, so take me as I am.

This may mean you'll have to be a stronger man. Must assure that when I start to make you nervous and I'm going to extremes, tomorrow I will change and today won't mean a thing.

I'm a I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I do not feel ashamed, I'm your health machine.

I'm nothing in between, you know you wouldn't want it any other way.

Here comes that bridge, ready?

Just when you think you got me figured out, the season's already changing.

I think it's cool you do what you do and don't try to save me.

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a I'm a sinner, I'm a saint.

I do not feel ashamed.

I'm your hellish dream.

I'm nothing in between. You know you wouldn't want it any other way.

I'm a bitch, I'm a tease. I'm a goddess on my knees.

When you're hurt, when you suffer, I'm an angel undercover.

I've been numb, I'm revived. Don't say I'm not alive. You know you wouldn't want it any other way.

I hope you had as much fun playing playing that as I did. That's such a great, great song. A lot of stuff rhythmically that it is teaching you. And if you love this female rock stuff, I have a whole playlist over here from artists like Stevie Nicks, Melissa Etheridge, Jewel, other great artists that you can go learn and have fun with on your guitar. So go check out that playlist right over there and see if there's another song that you'd like to learn.