Lauren Bateman's YouTube lesson teaches how to play CCR's 'Proud Mary' with focus on chord structure and strumming. Verses: eight measures of D, two measures of A, two measures of Bm, four measures of D; simple strumming uses straight 8th notes (down-up). The intro/interlude uses a more advanced four-measure syncopated strumming pattern with frequent chord changes on upbeats (C, A, G, F, D are used in that section). The video also gives a simplified Bm option for beginners and suggests palm-muting for dynamics.
Chapters
Hey, everybody, welcome back. Lauren Bateman here. In this guitar lesson video, we're gonna be doing the guitar lesson for Proud Mary. We're gonna be doing the CCR version, not the Tina and Ike Turner, although it works for both. So whatever one you want to do, you do it. Let's get started on the lesson.
So there's a really syncopated strumming section that comes in here. So if you're a beginner, you might want to skip, skip that or hold strumming on that section just to play it for you really quick. It's going to sound like this.
So, I mean, it's kind of like a quintessential piece of the song. It's super, super cool. So let's talk about the simple strumming first that we're going to use for the verses. And then I will go into the kind of more syncopated strumming pattern first for that intro section in that interlude that keeps repeating throughout the song. Before I jump in, just want to give a shout out to some of my YouTube supporters. Frank Nischke, Edwin Bergen, Samuel Montoya, who gave me a 50 donation. Thank you so much. I mean, that's amazing. Really, really appreciate you guys. Really appreciate the support. I do put a lot of time and effort into these videos. Glad you guys are enjoying it. Let's jump into the actual lesson for this video. So the verse itself is pretty easy. It's mostly D chord. It's a lot of D chord. And then we have an A chord. A B minor does pop in, so we do use a bar chord, which is why I put this song more in the intermediate category. One, for that crazy strumming you just heard. But two, because of this B minor, you could use a simplified B minor, which looks kind of like an F major 7 chord or A really scrunched up C chord on the bottom three strings. First finger, first string, second fret, second finger, third string, third fret, and then third finger on the fourth string of the fourth fret. I'm not going to play it that way, but just wanted to give you guys an option if you needed a simpler version. The full B minor definitely sounds better. So this verse is 8 measures of D. That's how much D we're playing. So it's eight measures of D, two measures of A, two measures of B minor, and then four measures of D. And those are all of the verses. And so we're not going to go over that too much. What we're going to talk about is just the strumming so the strumming is just. We're going to do straight up 8th notes, nothing special, nothing really crazy. And we're going to use down ups instead of all down. So it's just going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And.
Down, up, down, up, down, up.
Down and Big wheel on turning.
Here's the B minor.
Proud Mary keep on burning.
Here's the D's.
Rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling on a river.
Now those rollings, if you're gonna try singing this, just be aware those come on the up strum.
So rolling, rolling, rolling on a river.
So if you're trying to sing this and you toss it on the down strum, it's going to be off those. Those roll ins definitely come in on the up strum. But that's really it for the verse. So the verse is really, really simple for this song. And most of the song is verse, which is great. But like I said earlier, we have this intro part and this kind of interlude that does jump in on the song. So let's go over the very intricate strumming for that section of the song. So this strumming pattern, definitely an intermediate level strumming pattern. Because we're switching a lot of chords on ups. It can be very fast. You've heard it in the intro I did earlier. So let's start with kind of like the first half. So the first two measures are C and A. So C major and A major. Okay. And you can hear that.
All right. So the circumstances C is going to be 1 and 2.
Okay, 1 and 2 and is the A. 1 and 2 and so it's down, up, down and then up is the A.
Okay, so we got down, up, down.
Up, down, up and then up, down.
Up is on the A. So the whole strum, if I did it without switching chords, would be down.
Up, down, up, up, down, up. One and two and, and four and.
But we're switching to A on the and after two. So that up strum after two. So it sounds like this 1 and.
2 and, and 4 and 1 and 2 and, and 4. And 1 and 2 and, and 4and 1 and 2 and, and 4&down.
Down, up, down, up, up, down, up.
So that's the first two measures of that section. The next measure, we have four chords in one measure. So we're going to be doing a lot of switching here. So it starts the same. We start with the C. So we have down, up, down and then the up on the A so it starts the same.
Down, up, down, up.
We're not going to do it down. The rest of this is ups. We're going. We've got a G on an up, then we have an F on an up. All right, so we've got starting. The full measure is going to be.
C1 and 2 and, and, and. All right, 1 and 2 and, and, AND.
So I'm still strumming down like it's there. I'm just not hitting any strings. So so far we've got first three measures.
All right, and then the last measure, we also have four chords. Fortunately, it's. They're the same, they repeat a little bit. So it's an F chord and a D chord. So we're going to do two more ups on F. Up, up. And then very fast we're going to switch to the downbeat. So we've been on the upbeat, doing all these ups. So it's going to be and, and.
Three, four.
And, and three, four.
So we're jumping right onto that D. So it's the and of 1. Oops.
The and of 1 for the F.
The and of 2 and then 3, 4 is D. Alright, so we have an F chord coming in here too. So that's again why the song is more in the intermediate realm, because of this syncopation and because we're using barre chords. So let me go through the whole thing beginning to end.
So we have down, up, down, up, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, up, up, up, up, down, down.
There's the whole thing. One more time for you guys. Ready?
So there you go. That is a four measure strumming pattern. Four measure strumming pattern. Super cool. I love it. Thank you to CCR for giving this to us because it sounds really cool. So start this very, very slow. Take it one measure at a time, figure out the pattern and then try and weave them all together and then pick up the pace. Because like I said, if you get to this, where you're doing, you know, you want to do the Ike and Tina Turner version and you want to pick this up, you know.
If you play the F chord right, but work your way up to that speed. Don't play it fast. I like that this song starts slow because you can practice slow now a little Dynamics tip for you guys, especially when you get into playing this song faster after that intro, is to really bring down the strumming on the D and maybe use a little bit of pulse palm muting. Watch, I'm going to show you. So we have the intro.
Hear that?
I'm letting very little of the chord ring through. I'm palm muting a little bit on the lower part of my guitar. So I have the kind of the fatty part of my palm resting just in front of the bridge of the guitar. Gives that chunky sound.
Kind of letting the bottom strings ring.
But I left a good job in.
The city so that when you get to that big wheel part, you can really open it up and go.
Big wheels keep on turning brown B minor primary keep on burning Rollin rollin.
Rollin rollin so you guys can kind of add in dynamics. So that's all I'm doing. After that intro, we've got the two big downs D D and then I'm throwing my palm right to those strings.
So it's not. If I didn't palm you what it would sound like. So I'm kind of muting these top few strings and I'm letting kind of one or the two on the bottom ring up.
So you get a really, really cool dynamic. So that when, like I said, when you get to that big wheel, you can really open that up and keep the rest of the verse really soft. Thanks so much, guys for watching the video. Don't forget to give me a like, you know. Comment. Subscribe. Subscribe. Appreciate you guys so much. There is going to be a couple more videos. YouTube's going to pop up. Check those out. I have more CCR songs. Feel free to go check those out. And I hope to see you guys in another lesson video.
