Perfect Guitar Lesson by Ed Sheeran

Dancing in the dark.

You between my arms bell full on grass.

Listen to our fairy songs. You said you lived the mess I was lit underneath my breath you, you.

Hey everybody, Lauren here. Welcome to super cool song by Ed Sheeran called Perfect. And it's a very cool song in that it uses all those super, super simple chords. Remember my two fingered lesson that everyone gives me crap about. Well, you can use those chords on this song if you know the full chords. Awesome. Use those too. So this is actually a really, really good beginner song. You notice here I got the capo on the first fret and helps us keep the chords easy for you guys. And basically the whole song is G, E minor, C and D. There is a walk down that happens at the end of the chorus. But other than that it's a fairly straightforward song. We're playing in what we call six, eight time. So instead of counting to four, 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. Counting to six, 1, 2, 3, four, five, six. 1, 2, 3, four comma five, six. Gives us that waltz feel that swing. So I'm going to go over some different strumming patterns you can use for this song. There's actually a number of different ways you can play this song. You can strum it, you can finger it.

Baby I.

Dancing in the dark, you between my arms.

You can finger pick it if you know how to finger pick it. Lots of really cool things that you can do. I'm probably going to stick mostly to strumming towards the end of this tutorial. Maybe I'll show you some things you can do finger picking wise.

And you can get a lot more dynamics out of the song with a pick but you can do both, it's fun. Alright, so let's start off with the simple strumming and like I said, it's six, eight times. So we're going to do six down strums. We're counting to six. Each chord on this verse is two measures and the chord progression repeats. It's G, E minor, C, D, G, E minor, C, D. Nice chord progression. The intro is just genius. But we're gonna start with the chorus here and it's sorry, the verse and it's one, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. All down strums. That is our strumming pattern. Now something you can do if you want to start working on the dynamics of your strumming is you can accent the fourth beat. What I'm doing. So if we go back to this G chord, I'm kind of catching very Softly the bass, the low strings of the guitar. And then when I get to the fourth beat, 1, 2, 3. I'm giving us full strum to the chord.

So you can hear I'm kind of accenting, giving a little oomph to that fourth beat. It gives some dynamics and gives a really good flow. And it gives a beat, actually gives a rhythm to the song, which is cool. So that's our verse. We're just going through the second time through that chord progression, though. You'll notice if you've gone to my website and you've downloaded the chord chart, you'll notice at the very end it says D1 and then D strum and cut. So we're going to play a full measure of D. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And then we're gonna play one D and cut it. And all I'm doing is I'm taking my fingers on my left hand and I'm muting the strings. So it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

And then we still need to count 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5, 6. 1, 2, 3, four, five, six.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Because when we get into the prechorus, we want to be able to jump back in time timing rise timing wise, right back on the one. So that's it. That is your verse. It's very, very simple. G, E minor, C, D, G, E minor, C, D with this little cutoff on the end. So that's your strumming that you can do.

One.

Sorry.

One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two. Oh me.

Darling Just D. Right in five. Follow my lead.

You can add little embellishments if you want. I'm not going over how to add the embellishments. Not right now.

But that's basically the. The verse that we're working on.

And then we jump into pre chorus, which doesn't change that much. It still starts C, E minor or G E minor, C. The chord progression is the same, the strumming is the same. Except the first time through, we do G for one measure and then D over time. So it sounds like this. It's all the same because we were.

Just kids when we fell in love not knowing what it was. I'm gonna give you up this G.

To D. So instead of playing two measures of D, we play G for one measure, D for one measure. And then the next part is the same as the verse with the cutoff.

Darling, just kiss me so your heart is on my own and in your eyes you're holding mine to.

And again, we're counting because we want to jump right back in on the one when we get to.

The chorus. So the chorus, I mean, you can keep things just the six strums, keeping it simple or, you know, you can spice it up. You saw I had some up strums, baby.

I'm basically doing down, up, down, up down.

So I'm adding a lot more in between. And I'm accenting.

I'm accenting the one on these as well. It should be the one and the four.

Each of these chords, Each of these chords in the chorus is one measure. We're not doing two measures anymore. So if we got it, it's got.

Baby.

Dancing in the dark.

Moon between my arms we got down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down.

So we're accenting the one beat and the four beat on the. On these rhythms. We're sticking some Upstroms in between on that. But the chorus, the progression changes a little bit. It's the same chords. It's E minor, C, G, D, E minor, cgd, E minor, cgg, all the way to the end until we get to the walk down. So basically we're playing this pattern through.

Down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down, up down. And then we.

Ah, so we end in a cut as well. So after we come out of our chorus, we're going to keep the same strumming. We're doing a walk down. This is a very, very common walk down that happens in a lot of songs everywhere. I mean, if you're playing in the key of G, which this song is in, and you use a walk down, it's going to be this walk down.

9 out of 10 times. So basically we're doing a bass walk down. So our bass player will be playing a G note, an F sharp note, E, and then ending on D.

So that's what we're mimicking this walk down here. Very, very common. We're going to start by playing a G chord. And now on the sheet you will see D, F. And basically what it's saying is play a D chord with an F sharp in the bass. This is one way to do it. My guitar teacher yelled at me all the time. Totally not the classical or traditional way to do it. I like using my thumb for some people. That's weird. The easy way to do it is to just remove your second finger from the G chord and and move your first finger up. Since I'm not strumming the whole chord, it doesn't matter that whether or not I have the D on the bottom. This is probably the right way to make it. I do it this way because I'm lazy. But. So we have a G4.

First finger comes up to the F sharp, then we go to E minor and then we end on G. So it sounds like this.

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

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

And that's your chorus. So again, going through the walk down G.

F sharp, the E minor D. And you can just do one strum if you want.

Adds a little drama to it. I like doing a little bit more strumming, but that's all it is. One chord to the next E minor.

And then we have one measure of C and a cutoff D. And that looks like most of the parts here. There is an interlude, but there's really not much that's changing. So let me go through.

Why don't I just do pre chorus into chorus? Because the verse is pretty much the same. So we'll do.

Because we were just kids when we fell in love.

It was I would not give you up cause G to the D done. And just kiss me slow. Your heart is all lost my paper.

Your eyes are whole.

Dancing in the dark.

You between my arms.

Listen to our fairy songs you said you love the best I was put underneath my breath. You love it I knew love love.

And as you saw I lost my pick. But really cool example of how you can strum using your fingers without your pick question people ask me, how do you do that? The thumb takes care of the down strum, index finger takes care of the up strums. Just so you know. So when I'm doing down, up, down is the thumb, up is the index finger.

It's really just these two fingers doing all the work that strumming. And that's it, that's what you have it. So since I lost my pick and I talked to you a little bit about finger picking in the beginning. If you'd like help with finger picking in general, I do have a finger picking course in my online course. You can go and subscribe for a month if you want to just to check that out. Or you can buy longer access whatever you want. It goes over some different Picking things. And one of the things in there is block picking. Where is you play the bass note of a chord and you block pick with your other fingers. I found love.

Kind of like yesterday.

For me.

Darling Just dive right in, follow my lead.

I found a girl.

So basically the g is playing 1, 1, da da ba ba ba. So I'm accenting the bass again on 1 and 4. So it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

1, 2, 3, 4,.

5, 6, 4.

One way to do it. Another way to do it. Since this is in six, eight time, you can pick a pattern in six. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 1, 2, 3, four, five, six. 1, 2, three, four, five, six.

Where the thumb is picking the bass pattern and.

You'Re playing thumb 1, 2, 3, 2, 1. With your right hand.

And since you have I just showed you how to strum, you can go between picking and strumming for this. So we've got thumb 1, 2, 3, 2, 1. Thumb 1, 2, 3, 2,. And then you can go right into strumming. So you can still add some dynamics. So those are a couple little things you can do finger picking wise. You can block pick.

Or you can finger arpeggiate each chord. Arpeggiate means you play each chord or each note of a chord independently. Instead of strumming, you play out each note. And I'm basically just playing the bottom three strings. I'm playing the bass note or the lowest note of the chord followed by the bottom three strings played by fingers 1, 2, 3, 2, 1.

Thumb 1, 2, 3 2, 1.

Thumb1, 2, 3, 2,1.

Thumb.

Now C, I move down to the fifth string for my thumb because that's the bass note. And then D, my thumb moves to the fourth string.

And yes, you can add other kind of cool.

Baby I'm dancing in the dark you between the arms.

I would think things you can add as you get into finger picking. But those are a couple simple things you can do if you wanted to do some finger picking for this song. Because it's one of those nice songs that can sound nice with some finger picking. So there you go. That is Ed Sheeran's Perfect. I hope you guys enjoyed the lesson and a little bonus finger picking lesson that's in here. And I'll see you guys in the next lesson video.