Let’s Live for Today Guitar Lesson | Easy The Grass Roots Guitar Tutorial

Hey guitar enthusiasts, today I'm gonna do a super fun song by The Grassroots called Live for Today. It's gonna require us putting a capo on the 4th fret, and the reason for this is it eliminates playing all the bar chords in this song. And speaking of chords, let's go over the ones we're gonna be using. So we're gonna be using an A minor chord and a C chord. That's gonna be most of the song, and what I really love about this is to go from an A minor to C chord, it's actually a very good song for beginners to play. So if you're playing a full C chord and you have to go back to the A minor, guess what? You can leave the first 2 fingers in place and just pivot that 3rd finger right underneath. And then when you go back to the C chord, just pivot that 3rd finger back up. All right. And you'll see I'm making some micro adjustments with my hands and the frets. Okay. It's kind of sliding back and forth, but really it's just one finger movement. All right. You can play the entire verse of this song by just using one finger, moving one finger. Okay. You gotta use 3. But you only gotta move one, which for beginners makes things a little bit easier. Once we get into our chorus, we do have the addition of the E minor chord, a G chord, and we do have an F chord. But I said I was gonna eliminate the barre chords, so you could play an F major 7 version, which looks like a C chord. Okay, if you play that C chord, move your 2nd finger down, put your pinky underneath the 3rd. This is a fuller F major 7. You could also play a 3-finger version, which is your C chord. And you just slide it down. Slide the top 2 fingers down 1 string. Okay, so those are your options. If you can play a full F chord, awesome, that's great. That's the only one you'll need for this song. Okay, so again, you don't know F major, don't worry, use F major 7 and it's gonna sound perfectly fine. All right, so let's talk about the part. This intro is just single strums, and there is a cool little intro lick which I will teach you later in this lesson, so stick around for that. There is a cool little intro lick that goes over the top, but right now we're just going to strum A minor and C, and they're held for 4 counts. 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. That's how the song starts. So it's just 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. All right, and then once we get through the intro, we start strumming. The strumming pattern we're going to use for this song is going to be One, two and three and four and one, two and three and four and one, two and three and four and. And that is play down, down, up, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Now for this song, we're going to use the same strumming pattern pretty much throughout the song except for one part. I'm going to show you towards the end, but we're going to use this song, the strumming pattern for the entire song. The key. The key is the dynamics. So on the, the verses, we want to keep it soft.

Okay.

A little bit more gentler with your strumming. And then when we get to the choruses— okay, when we get to those choruses, you just want to tighten up your grip on the pick just a little bit and dig into the guitar Just a little bit more. All right, so let's just practice the softness and the loudness. We're gonna stay on an A minor chord. All right, so we're gonna do soft. One, two. Here we go. Soft. Okay, here's loud. Three and four and loud. Back to soft. Get back to loud.

Here we go, ready?

And—

So just getting a little bit more aggressive on that strumming for the chorus because we want to show the dynamics. We don't have a full band, all right? I'm just playing by myself. We don't have a full band, so we got to change up the verses and choruses Somehow. And quick introduction if you don't know who I am, my name is Lauren Bateman and I specialize in teaching older adults how to play guitar, fun songs just like this. And the key is that we just take things slow, we take things easy, and we break them down step by step so that you can play the songs you know and love on the guitar. So let's take this from the verse. Okay, so after the first verse, there's gonna be a part where we're gonna strum the A minor chord and hold it, and then it's gonna go 1, 2, 3, 4. That kind of leads us into the chorus. So the first verse, we hold it for a 4-count— 1, 2, 3, 4— that I'm gonna count 1, 2, 3, 4. The second verse, I strum and then it goes 2, 3, 4, and we jump right into the chorus section. So what we're gonna do now, we're gonna do the quick play-through for that, and then I'm gonna show you a little fun part that happens on the third verse that's a little bit different. All right, taking it from the top, from the intro, 1 strum to start. Okay, we got 1 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Here we go.

When I think of all the worries people seem to find and how they're in a hurry to complicate their minds by chasing after money and dreams that can't come true, I'm glad that we are different with better things to do. They are, they plan their future. I'm busy loving you too. One, two, three, four, and sha la la la la la live for today.

Sha la la la la la live for today.

No worry about tomorrow, babe.

Sha la la la la la live for today.

We were never meant to worry the way that people do. I don't need to hurry as long as I'm with you. We'll take it nice and easy and use my simple. You'll be a loving woman, I'll be a loving man. We'll take the most from living and have lunch while we can. 2, 3, 4, and sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today.

Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today.

Oh, don't worry about tomorrow, okay?

Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today.

Oh, don't worry about tomorrow, okay?

All right, so those are our first 2 verses and our first 2 choruses. So over that end of that chorus, that's where we're gonna play this little lick line. So I think this is a good opportunity for me to teach you that little lick line. It's not too hard. All right, I'm gonna show you an easier version, and I'm gonna show you a slightly harder version. So the easier version does not require the use of Hammer-ons if you've never done that before. I will demonstrate quickly afterwards. This is what the easy one is gonna sound like. We're playing everything on the high E string here, and you don't have to worry that there's a capo on because we're playing high enough on the frets. Okay, so it's gonna start on the 9th fret of the high E string. Okay, I'm playing my first finger on the 9th fret of the high E string. It's so it's nine nine nine eleven. And then it's gonna go back to 9. Okay, okay. And then that's the easy one. So it's— and then we're gonna slide back to the 7th fret, and then we're gonna jump up to the 12th fret, and then 11th fret. All right, so that one is And then you repeat. So it's 9, 9, 9, 11, 9, 7, 7, 7, 12, 11. So let me play it without talking over it so you can just hear the timing. So you got 1, 2, 3, 4. That's the easy way, and that will fit right over these. So the first one, this is played over the A minor chord. That's played over the A minor, and this one's played over the C chord. Okay, now if you want to spice it up and make it sound more like the recording, we're going to throw a hammer-on and a slide in. Okay, just makes it a little bit more complicated, and you have to know how to do a hammer-on. A hammer-on is a lead guitar technique where you play one pick, but you play multiple notes, and you do it by hammering your finger really fast down on a string. So this one's going to sound like this, this first one.

Ooh.

Okay, so we've got 9, 9, 9, 11. It stays the same except when we come back to this 9, We're gonna pick the 9 once and hammer down and pull off. And when we're pulling off with our finger, we're not just lifting the finger off, we're actually pulling down on the string. Okay? That might take some practice, so in the beginning you can just start with this one. So the second lick now is going to be 7 sliding into 12. Okay, so we're slide—we're pushing into the string, picking once. You can hear me. I'm pushing into the string and sliding up to the twelfth fret. The way to not overshoot the fret is to look at the fret. I'm playing. I'm looking at the twelfth fret and I'm sliding up to it and then sliding back to the eleventh fret. So that one is okay. So if I play them together, it's gonna sound like this: two, three, four. All right, so that's the fun lean line, but we're not done with the song yet. There is one more part that is a little bit more intricate. You do not have to play this song when we do the full playthrough, but here it is. Okay, so at the end of the third verse, they start speeding up the song. The tempo actually changes. So we go from just kind of like.

Da da da da da da.

And then it feels like the song gets faster. That's because it does get faster. But at the end, we've got this give me some loving, give me all your loving. On the very end, we've got a regular C chord, two and three and four and an A minor, one two and three and four and and then we have an E chord. So there's this measure of like. 3, 4. Okay, 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and 2 and 3 and, and then it's bum bum bum bum ba da ba da da da da da da da.

Okay, so we're going from C.

Let me do that again slowly. So it's 1, 2 and 3 and 4 and 1, 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and bum bum Bum bum, and then A minor.

Ba da da da da da.

Today, it's the only weird complication. But if you're not ready when I get to that part, just don't play it and jump back in on the final chorus. All right, let's take it from the top. If you want to play the intro, play the intro over and jump in on the verse with me. But I'm just gonna take it from single strums. Let's go. One, two, three, four.

Think of all the worries people seem to find and how they're in a hurry to complicate their minds by chasing after money and dreams that can't come true. I'm glad that we are different. We've better things to do. They have this plan, their future. I'm busy loving you.

One, two, three, four, and sha la la la la la live for today. Sha la la la la la live for today.

Don't worry about tomorrow.

Sha la la la la la live for today.

We're never meant to worry the way that people do. I don't need a hurry as long as I'm with you. We'll take it nice and easy, and you. Use my simple plan. You'll be my loving woman. I'll be your loving man. We'll take the most from living. Have pleasure while we can. Two, three, four.

Sha la la la la la. Live for today. Sha la la la la la. Live for today.

Don't worry about tomorrow.

Hey. Sha la la la la la.

Live for today.

Baby, need to feel you inside me. I gotta feel you deep inside of me.

Baby, please come close to me.

I gotta have you now, please. Shalalalalala, live for today.

Shalalalalala, live for today. Won't overthink about tomorrow, hey. Shalalalalala, live for today.

Now if you're a big fan of songs from the '60s and '70s, then I highly recommend you go check out my beginner song list right over there where I teach you how to play lots of fun and cool classics just like this.