Play Your First Song Without Sight-Reading Music!

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. Lauren Bateman here, and we're going to talk about how to play Ode to Joy on the guitar. It's a simple song that you can play from beginning to end. So by the end of this lesson, you're going to be able to play a full song. Hopefully you watched my last lesson on how to read guitar tablature. If you have not, go check that video out real quick. If you already know how to read guitar tablature, let's get started right now. Now, in the last video, I talked about playing individual notes, but I didn't talk too much about fretting of the guitar. So when you are playing notes on the guitar, you want to make sure to try and get as close to the front, to the middle of the fret as possible. This is where it's going to be easiest to play and easiest to make notes sound clean, versus some of you might be getting this kind of muted sound in your playing. And it usually means you might be playing towards the back of the fret. And I'll show you here. I'm going to play on the third fret. I'm going to lightly press very close to the front of the fret, very close to this metal wire. Okay? And then I'm going to slowly move my finger back with the same pressure. And you're going to hear as I get a little bit past the middle of the back of the fret, it starts buzzing. And by the time I get to the back of the fret, the note is completely dead. So if you're hearing that in your playing, just watch your fingers. Try and get them to as close to the middle, to the front of the fret as possible. And I guarantee you'll have much cleaner notes than you will towards the back, because you got to press so much harder on the back side of the fret. All right, so let's just review those first eight notes. We did that in the last lesson, so hopefully you have those down. And if you didn't do that lesson, we'll just review them quickly here. So we're going to take this from the first measure, and if you do not have the PDF for this music yet, just scroll down and you can go download and print the PDF. Just go grab that right now. If you don't have it, we're going to start at the top with the first measure. Now, I want you to remember that a measure is just a box of music, okay? Each one of these blocks is called a measure in music. All right? Start learning some of the terminology, if you're going to be a guitar player here. So we're starting off with zero, which means open string, fretting, hands, not doing anything, followed by one, followed by three. Okay? And I recommend whenever you see the number one for the fret, use your first finger. And whenever you see the number three, use your third finger. This does not always line up this way on guitar tab, especially when you start playing higher up on the neck. But here in the open position, it just happens to work out what is open position. It's usually these first three frets of the guitar because we'll usually play a lot of the open strings. Okay, so we're starting with an open string here. And we have high E string, the bottom string here. Open, open, 1, 3. Those are our first four notes. Open, open, 1, three. And then we're going to do three, one, open. And we have our first string change. We're going to bring the third finger up to the B string third fret. Okay? So so far we have open, open, 1, 3, 3, 1, open, 3. Very nice. Alrighty. So let's move on to the third fret or, sorry, the third measure, which is the next box of music. Our first finger is going to stay on the B string this time. And we're going to play that twice at the first fret. So it's going to be 1, 1, back to 3 and then open E. Okay, so that again, just that third measure is going to be 1, 1, 3, open.

One more time.

1, 1, 3, open.

Let's take this all from the start, just those first three measures. So we got 1, 2, ready, and open, open, 1, 3, 3, 1, open.

3, 1, 1, 3, open.

All right, now the great thing about that is that's about 80% of the song. Those first three measures are about 80%, which is great. What changes is a little bit on the fourth measure, which we're going to talk about here. We've got an open high E string and then a very quick 3, 3 on the B string. Okay. That's what I like about this song. A lot of people already know the melody of the music. So I don't have to start teaching you too much about rhythm yet. You kind of understand the rhythm because you probably know the melody of the song because it's very popular. So again, just on the end, that last measure is going to be open, high E string and Then a quick 3, 3, 3 on the B string. Okay? So if we take all four of those together, it's going to sound like.

This open open 1, 3, 3, 1. Open 3, 1, 1, 3. Open, open, 3, 3.

Okay, now, the great thing about the next line is the first three measures are exactly the same. The only change is on the end on the eighth measure. The very last box of this next line. We're just going to play 3, 1, 1, as opposed to open 3, 3. We're changing it to 3, 1, 1. All right, so let's try that second line, because you already can play 75% of it. Here we go. Let's take it from the top again from the top of that second line. 1, 2, 3, 4.

So you have open, open 1, 3, 3, 1. Open 3, 1, 1, 3. Open 3, 1, 1.

All right, let's take those two lines together before we move on to the third line, where we're going to have the most movement in the song. Okay, slow it down just a little bit. One, two, three, four.

Open, open, one, three, three, one. Open three, one, one, three, one. Open, open, three, three. Open, open, one, 3, 3, 1. Open three, one, three. Open three, one, one.

There you go. You're already playing half of this song. And that's why I like Tab. That's why I like Tab. Very, very simple for you to sing. Start playing music, okay? And I know this is a very simplified song, but at least it's not Mary Had a Little Lamb. But it just goes to show you how we can. With something very, very simple, we can get the fingers moving. Because finger dexterity is very, very important in music. I focus a lot on that in my seven level guitar system. And for those of you who don't know me, my name is Lauren Bateman, and I specialize in helping absolute beginners, particularly older adults ages 50 plus, learn how to play guitar and have fun playing music that they know and love. That's what I do here. So those are the first two lines of this song. And what we're going to do is we're going to move to the next line where there's a lot more movement and there's a lot more changes in the music. Let's start with that first measure, that first block of music there. We're going to start on the B string at the third fret. So I see three, three. So we're going to play three, three, open, high E string, and then back to the B string first fret. Okay?

So it's three, three, open one again. Three, three, open one one more time. And three, three, open one.

So the second measure or the second block of music is going to start with the third Fret, fret on the B string. And then high E string, we're going open one, open. And then the first finger just moves up one string to the B string at the first fret. So that whole measure is three open one, open one.

That's what that one's going to sound like. So the next measure, same exact thing. Except this time instead of ending on one, we're going to end on three. So it's going to be.

Okay.

And then the last measure is going to be 1 on the B string, 3 on the B string. And then we get our first note on the G string open. Okay, so let's take that whole line because there's a lot of change going on there. So we have 3, 3, open 1.

3, open 1, open 1, 3, open One, open 3, 1, 3, open.

Let's do it again without me saying the notes. Ready? One, two. Here we go.

M.

And now to end the song, we're going to repeat the second line. You already know how to play it? We already went over it. It's the same as the second line. So let's go over it again.

So it's open, open 1, 3, 3 1. Open 3, 1, 1, 3, open 3, 1, 1.

And look at that. We've just played through our first song. Let's take it all the way from the beginning, okay? At a nice even slow tempo. If I'm still going too fast, use the settings. Cog slow me down. All probably sound like a drunk Stevie Nicks, but that's okay. Totally, totally fine. Just slow it down. Or if you need to pause the video, pause the video and play along at your own speed. But here we go. I want to try and work on consistency here. So if you make a mistake, don't stop. Try and keep up with me. Try and play through the mistakes. That's where you'll learn the most. Alright? So if you make a mistake, just try and jump right back in if you can. Alright, here we go. Slower pace. 1, 2, 3, 4. M.

Sam.

And now one more time at a slightly faster pace. One, two, here we go.

Congratulations on playing your first full song. I hope that boosted your confidence and gave you some insights into how fun and easy it can be to play music on the guitar when you have the right process and you have the right blueprint. Step by step. Now, I don't want to say that this is easy. It was probably a challenge for you, but you can see how when you have the right instructions, how things can make a lot more sense for you. So what we're going to do in the next video is we're going to talk a little bit about more timing and rhythm.

How.

How do we actually count music on the guitar? Because counting is a very, very important piece of music, Especially if you want to play music with others. You have to be in time. Go watch that video right over there. We're going to be talking about how to count rhythm on guitar.