Paint It Black Guitar Lesson

I see a red door and I want to paint it back.

No colors anymore I want to paint them black.

I've seen a girl from my dress in the sun goes.

I have to rub my head until the dark.

So this is Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones. This is a very easy song in terms of the chord progression. The chords for this song are E minor, B7, D, G and D. There's also an A7 in here. So if you don't know your seven chords, I would suggest at least going and learning the B7 chord, because you're definitely going to need that for this song. So the pattern for this song, like I said, is pretty easy. It's a fairly repetitive song. So the beginning part is E minor followed by B7, followed by E minor again and B7.

And we're going to do each of those chords for two measures. Now the strumming pattern I'm going to use is an 8th note strumming pattern. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 1 and 2 and 3 and four. And I'm using all down strums on my strumming hand here.

I'm also not strumming the entire chord. I'm just strumming kind of those lower bass strings.

I'm not doing.

We're not really getting those bottom strings to ring through. So I'm really just focusing on the top strings. Now if you really want to spice it up, you can also do something what we call palm muting, which gives me kind of a chunky sound.

I'll give you a close up of how to do that. But for now, what we're going to do is just focus on the actual progression of the song and how to play it. And then I can show you, if you're interested in doing that palm muting part or learning how to do that, I can show you how to do that. So Again, the first two parts of this song are E minor for two measures, B7 for two measures, E minor for two measures, followed by B7 again for two measures. Then after that, the chord progression changes to these half measure patterns of half measure of E minor, half measure of D, half measure of G, half measure of D, followed by two full measures of E minor. We then go back and repeat those half measures again. So it's going to be E minor, D, G, D. And then we're gonna follow that up with a measure of A7 and a measure of B7. Now if this is a lot for you to memorize, There should be a link below this video of where you can go and download the chord chart for this song so that you can follow along. But once you've got that, that's the entire song. All you have to do is focus on the strumming. So for this song, when I play it those first eight measures, I usually palm mute it because it sounds really cool. So I'll usually do this. E minor, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And B7. I'll do that as palm muting because it sounds really cool.

And then when I get to the part with the half measure progressions, I let go of the palm muting and let the guitar ring through. So it really adds a cool dynamic to the sound. So we go from having this on the b7. 2, 2 and 3 and 4.

And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And one, two, one, two, one, two thousand one, two, one, two million three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two- one, two, one, two and one, two, one, two of three, four. One, two of three, four.

1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, four.

So you can hear that gives a lot of dynamics and it makes the song sound really, really cool. Instead of just always doing.

Then we kind of have one level, one volume for the song. So let's go through each part. I'm gonna play it. I'll play it a little bit slower. I'll sing along just so that you can hear how it's supposed to sound. Just gonna do one time through on this. It looks like this pattern repeats. 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 times. And then the ending of the song where he just keeps going, wanna paint it black? And he just keeps repeating that it's just the E minor and the B7. So E minor for two measures, B minor, B7 for two. It just keeps repeating that all the way out of the song. So let me go over the verse right here and I'm gonna play it for you with the palm muting so that you can hear it. So we got 1, 2, 3, 4.

I see a red door and I switch to paint it black. Back to E.

No colors anymore.

B7.

I want to paint it black now open up. And 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2,. 1, 2, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. 1, 2, 1, 2s, 1, 2, 1, two, a seven. Then be seven.

And then you're right back at the beginning at that E minor chord. So that is how to play the Rolling Stones. Paint it black. Very, very simple song. The only thing that's tricky is the speed. It's a very fast song. And also if you want to add a lot of cool dynamics to the song, that's also the tricky part. Because the palm muting is a little bit tricky if you've never done it before. But once you do get it, it will sound really cool. And if you do it on an electric guitar, it'll sound even better. Let me give you a close up of the palm muting that we're going to be using. When I teach students how to do palm muting, I'll usually tell them, hey, start up here by the sound hole. You'll hear.

You mostly hear string here. And then what we're going to do is we're going to slowly back up our hand until we get almost right in front of this bridge piece.

That tends to be.

Where the chunkiness lives on the guitar. So my palm is kind of sitting almost right here. We don't want to be right on the bridge or the strings are going to ring through and it's not going to give us the sound we want. So I tell people, start over your sound hole as acoustic guitar. Even if you're electric guitar, just start over the pickups and then slowly move your hand backwards.

There you go. Until you hear that open up and get really chunky. So start at the sound hole. Go very slow.

There we go. Now, if you look at my palm, you'll see it's flat against the string. So I'm.

Trying to give you a good angle here. Here we go.

So my whole hand is muting. That's why we are muting with the. That's why it's called palm muting. We're muting with the palm of the hand. So my hand is not hanging off. I know you're used to strumming and not having your hand, but now.

My palm is staying relatively stationary. I'm doing a lot of the picking more so with my wrist and almost my fingers here.

Gives that really, really chunky sound. So I'll show you again, I'll play through a little bit and I'll show you the palm muting versus not palm muting. So here's the palm muting with the E minor.

E7.

And here's the part with the half measure.

So you see, as soon as I take my hand off, the strings are allowed to ring through. So palm muting versus non pawning.

So once again, go to your sound hole and slowly back up that pick until you hear it open up.

And then you know you got the right spot. So a lot of people have trouble with this just because they're not used to keeping their palm flat. But that's the basics of how to do palm muting for this song, Sam.