LEARN FUN STRUMS & WALKDOWNS - Have You Ever Seen The Rain Guitar Lesson

I wanna know, will, have you ever seen the rain?

I wanna know, will, have you ever seen the rain.

Coming down on a sunny day?

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, we're gonna be doing an exciting song by ccr. Have you ever seen Lorraine? There's a really cool walk down in the chorus. There's lots of strumming patterns and I'm going to show you how to do it all step by step. Let's get started.

Now, before we jump into all the strumming patterns, let's go over the chords we're going to be using for the songs. We're starting with an A minor chord. We have a C chord, we have a G chord, and sorry to say, we have an F bar chord. Now if you're not great with bar chords, you could always use the 4 fingered F major 7 or the 3 fingered F major 7. It won't matter much for this song. Okay. The walk down does not include the bar chord. So if you can't play it, it's okay. So now that we mainly know the chords we're going to be using for this song, let's talk about the intro and how we're going to get this song started with our strumming pattern. So this song has what we call a pickup that starts on the A minor. So the song doesn't actually start on the downbeat of one. Usually we start a song and we go 1, 2, 3 and 4. And 1, 2, 3 and 4. This so is actually starting on the upbeat of four. All right, what do I mean? Listen briefly. Okay, so I'm going to start with this A minor. So it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, notice I started on an up strum on the and of four. One, two, three, four. Okay, and then the strumming pattern that's going to come after that is going to be one and, and three and, and. Okay, so that strumming pattern is one and, and three and, and now once we get into this strumming pattern, it kind of becomes a round. So when I play the song, I always think of it in terms of up, down, up, up, down, up, up, down, up, up, down, up. Listen, I'm just going to play the A minor for now. Listen to what I mean. So we're going to do the pickup and then I'm getting into the strumming pattern. Just listen, see if you hear that. Up, down, up, up, down, up. One, two, three, four.

Hear it. Up, down, up, up, down, up.

So when I start getting into this song, I don't really Count the beats. Because I find that up, down, up really, really drives the song for me. So when I play the song, I don't really count too much. But it's important to know that there is a pickup. Okay, and the chords for this, we have A minor, F, C, G. Alright, so if I were to play through the intro, it would sound like this. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, so if you hear I'm changing the chords on the downbeat, but if you watch my hand, for some of you. So the tricky part is going to be getting into that next chord fast enough. So if you notice on that last up after the four, I'm almost already starting to get into the next chord so I have enough time to change, like going from F to C. I don't really have to do that because I got the pivot point from going from F to C. But listen one more time and watch my hand. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4.

So even though I'm trying to hit the chord on the downbeat, it's almost like I'm hopping the rhythm a little bit by changing the chord over the up strum after the four. So as you get through the intro, we have the great verse, which it's great because it's mostly a C chord. So we're gonna be playing a lot of a C chord. And every once in a while you get two measures of G that pop in and then you hop back on over to the C chord. So the strumming pattern is going to be exactly the same. So once you get through the intro, you're in that rhythm of up, down, up, up, down, up, up, down, up, up, down, up. So we're going to start from a C chord and I'm just going to play through this verse, this first verse, beginning to end, so you guys can hear it. If you want to back it up and play along with me, you can change the settings. Cog if you need to slow me down. But first listen and then go back and try and play along with me. So we got 1, 2, 2, 3, 4.

1 and, and 3 and up, down, up, up, down, up.

Can you get that rhythm?

Here we go.

Someone told me long ago.

There's a.

Calm before the storm and I know.

And it's been coming for.

So the soul they say.

It'Ll rain a sunny day and I know.

Shining now like water.

So you see, we're coming into the chorus and we're going to have a completely different strumming pattern now. And I'm going to show you what I did first to transition from that verse into the chorus before I show you the chorus strumming pattern. All I did was I took our normal strumming pattern. So the strumming pattern as we explained is 1 and, and 3 and, and okay, that's the normal strumming pattern. All I did was just add an extra down in there. So it's going to be 1 and, and 3 and 4 and okay. Gets you kind of starts transitioning you away from that round rhythm in your head to put you a little bit more on a straight beat. I find it's easier to get into the next strumming pattern doing that. So once again it would be 1.

And, and 3 and, and 1 and, and 3 and and 1 and, and.

3 and 4 and okay, so that's the change.

1 and, and 3 and, And 1 and, and 3 and, & 1 and.

And 3 and 4and just a very. It's. It's only one extra strum. But I find for a lot of students it helps you get into that next strumming pattern but also kind of propels you. Starts projecting you into the chorus and getting excited about this change that's coming up. So what is the change that's coming up? Well, the strumming pattern we're going to be using, we're starting on that F chord. All right. For the chorus. And again, if you need to use the four fingered F major seven, that's fine. It won't sound exactly like the song, but it'll work. Okay, so what we're going to do, I'll use a G chord for now for those of you who aren't great at bar chords. And we're going to do down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, 1, 2 and, and 4 and.

Okay, so that's the strumming pattern we're going to be using for the chorus. Now could you use this strumming pattern for the entire song? Absolutely. You definitely could if you had trouble transitioning between those two strumming patterns. But if you listen to the record, I'm kind of doing it a little bit more the way they do on, on the album. So the chord progression here is going to be an F chord, a G chord, a C chord and an A minor. We're not going to put the walk down in first. I'm going to show you how to do the walk down in a little bit, but I want to show you how to do this rhythm first. So we're gonna start on the F chord and it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4. Down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up.

Let's do it.

Again.

F.

And there's an F.

A G. Then we go right back into the verse.

Okay, I'm going to show you how to transition back into the verse first. But let's go over this. Walk down now so that you guys can throw that in. So hopefully you got a feel for that rhythm. All right? And then I'm going to play through the whole chorus so you guys can hear it. So nothing changes with the F and the G. We're still playing F and G for full measure. The C and the A minor are going to start changing. Essentially, we're doing a walk down, a bass walk down.

Okay. So the notes we're trying to target are going to C note, B note, A note, and then a G note. So we're going to try and play chords that incorporate those notes. So to get a C note, playing a C chord is very logical. Right? So we have C. Now, the next chord, what we're going to do is it's going to be a C, B chord. Okay, and how are we going to do that? We're going to remove our third finger and we're just going to take our second finger, move it up one string, and it's kind of muting. We're muting that D string. Okay. So, so we're going from a C chord, removing the third finger, moving the second finger up, we got this C B, which allows us to get that B note. Okay. Then after that, pretty simple. We're going into A minor, and then we're going into a G chord. So C slash B is the only kind of weird chord that maybe you might not know. So it's going to sound like this.

Okay, so here I change the strumming pattern again. Let's do that again. So it's basically 1, 2, and 3, 4. And down, down, up for each chord. Ready? 1, 2, 3.

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

Four. And let's do it again. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Again, down, down, up for each chord, one more time. 1, 2, 3, 4.

So how's that going to sound in the chorus? If we throw that into the mix now, it's going to sound like this. Ready? From the top on the chorus, we got 1, 2, 3.

4.

I want to know have you ever seen the, the rain?

I want to know have you ever seen the rain.

Coming down on a sunny.

Day?

You can see right when I get to that C chord. We're back to down, up, up.

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

Up. Now, something I may not have mentioned before. You guys are probably wondering, Lauren, why does your strumming pattern sound like it's muting itself? Like it's not doing.

You can do that. If you heard on the end of the chorus there, I was going.

I was muting the strings on two and four. So if that. If you guys want to do that, you can. You just go down, up. You touch the strings with the palm of this strumming hand.

So you're basically deadening the strings on two and four. That's another option for you guys if you want to do that. If you guys had a lot of fun on this lesson and love ccr, then you definitely got to go check out my CCR song playlist. We go through lots of fun songs just like this, step by step. Lots of cool strumming patterns. Go click on that playlist right now, and I'll see you in another lesson.