A spoken, on-camera acoustic guitar lesson by Lauren Bateman teaching how to play "My Girl" by The Temptations. The lesson targets late-beginner to intermediate players: it demonstrates a syncopated strumming pattern (with a simplified alternative for beginners), walks through verse (C↔F), chorus (C → Dm7 → F → G) progressions, shows options for playing F and Dm7 (including easier major-7 or partial-bar options), and explains a later key change that shifts the song into D/G with simplified chords. The video includes an intro lead-line link, a short instrumental/solo section where the key changes, instructor shout-outs to supporters, and a closing call-to-action to like/subscribe.
Questions this video answers
Timothy McLaughlin and Henry Clapham.
A syncopated strumming pattern (omit one down strum); beginners can use a simplified pattern keeping the down strum on beat 3.
Chapters
Hey, everybody, welcome back. In this guitar lesson, we're going to go over My Girl by the Temptations. So let's get started.
I want to give a shout out real quick to a couple of my YouTube supporters, Timothy McLaughlin and Henry Clapham. Thank you guys so much for your lesson donations. Really appreciate it when you guys support me. Thanks so much. Let's get into the lesson video now and learn how to play this song so My Girl can be a beginner level song. I'll show you how to make some of these more difficult chords, like the F chord, easier for a beginner. If you wanted to attempt this song. But I would put this a little bit more in the beginner intermediate realm because of these small bar chords that we have to do in the song. But we're going to go through the strumming, the chord progressions. The key of this song also changes as well. So we'll go over where that change occurs and how we're going to work through it. So let's talk about the strum strumming pattern we're going to use. We're going to be using a syncopated strumming pattern. So we're going to be missing one of our down strums. Now, if you're a beginner, you can just keep the down strum in. So for someone who's a little more intermediate or late beginner, we're going to use the G chord and the strumming pattern is going to be 1, 2.
And, and 4 and down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up.
Down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up. Now if you're a beginner, just keep the down in there on the third beat. So it'll be 1, 2 and 3 and 4, and 1, 2 and 3 and 4 and no worries. But if you can do the syncopated rhythm, I think it sounds better. So you can choose the best option for you. Now, I do have a guitar lesson video on how to do the cool little intro.
I'll put a link to that up here. You guys can go visit this after that if you're interested in learning. But we're just going to focus on the strumming in the chorus chords. So this intro, that's what we have. We have that. So you can just strum a chord.
And then F and then it's C again and then F and then Smokey starts singing on our verse here. So that's really all the intro and the verses are. It's C back to F, C back to F. And that little line, that little lead line gets played over just these two chords. That, that's all we're doing is just the strumming pattern.
Down, down, up, up down, up down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up down, down, up, up, down, up.
Now if you don't know how to play the F bar chord, you can always play F major 7. Either the three fingered version or the four fingered version.
It's not gonna sound the best, but it will work.
So that's.
But if you know, if you know the bar chord, obviously it does sound much better. So let's talk about our chorus and then we're going to talk about the key change for this song. So the chorus we have somewhat quicker chord changes. We have a C chord for two beats, a D minor 7. So a D minor 7 is you bar, another little bar chord, you bar the first two fingers and.
The second finger at the third string, third string, second fret. So that is a D minor 7. So we have C, really easy to get into. From C you just flatten the first finger and add the second back in.
So I guess.
And all I'm doing is down, down.
Up, down, down, up, down, down, up. Then we got F. Down, down, up, down, down, up.
Okay, one more time. So it's C, D minor 7 to.
F to G.
Great.
And if you can do this little D minor 7 bar, and it sounds good. If you want to try the F this way.
Might be easy for you to try and get to from the D minor 7 chord. It's another way to do do F without a full bar chord. So that's the first two measures and then it repeats again. So we have C D minor 7 to F and to G and all of this again.
And then we switch back to the regular strumming. For my girl, C, C.
Talking about my girl, my girl now you could.
Keep str that G or you could hold it out. I like to hold it. So we got.
Double C.
D minor 7, 2, 3. I get so much.
So I like the hold. I think it adds like a nice little dynamic to the song. And after that you're going to go right back into another verse and another chorus. Then we have like an instrumental. So the solo things change up a little bit. We're going from C and F. That doesn't change to F to C to F. This is where it changes. So we have the hey, hey, hey, hey. D minor 7 to G, E minor.
And then to A.
Three quick strums, down, up, down.
And now we're totally changing keys. So everything I told you before goes out the window. And we have a whole new chord progression. Let's go through that solo one more time. So we have C.
F.
C.
F.
D minor 7.
To G. E minor, A, A, A.
All right, so now we're in a new verse in a totally different key, but the chords got easier. So it's different D and G now. So it's just D.
To G.
D back to G. That's all. The next verses is D and G. So when we get to the chorus, we're going to be changing fast between four different chords. So now it's going to be D to E minor.
And then G to A. G to A. All right, So I guess you'd say, what can you do, make me feel this way?
Right? So those are all down, down, up. And then we've got the My girl, which is D, My girl, double D. Then we got E minor.
Then we got A. And then we get to the kind of the outro talking about my girl.
With the D and another D. Then.
E minor.
And then A talking My girl, double D again.
And then we have E minor, talking.
About talking about my girl. And then we end on D and.
We hold totally different key. Very cool. So if you're a beginner and you can't do the first half of the song, you can do the second half of the song. So that's great. If you guys have liked the content in this video, make sure to give me a, like a comment. Don't forget to subscribe. Subscribe. YouTube is going to suggest some more videos over here. Go and visit those. I have lots of great songs, beginner songs, intermediate songs, songs with finger picking. Go check them out. And I hope to see you guys in another lesson video.
