Step-by-Step Father and Son Guitar Lesson with COOL Strumming & Intro

Foreign.

I want to say thank you to so many of my students who requested this song in the private Facebook group. I've actually never taught this song to any one of my students before, so this is a first for me, and it's a really great song. I'm excited to go over it with you guys today. Has a really, really cool intro that you just heard me play. We'll talk about how to do that and. And some different strumming mechanics that we can use throughout this song.

Now, even if you're an absolute beginner, you could play this song because the chords are all open chords except for a B minor chord that pops in every once in a while. But you could. You can fix that. All right. If you don't know how to do bar chords, you can always do the easy B minor chord, and that will work just fine for this lesson. So the other chords we have, we have our G chord. We have a D chord. We have a C chord and an A minor chord. Now, if you want to get a little bit trickier and in depth, you could also play an A minor 7 chord and A D F sharp. Okay. That's what I'm going to play at the play along in the end. But you can keep it very simple by just playing the simple open chords. G, D, A minor, and C. So now that we've gone over the chords, we're gonna use, let's go over that cool intro part that you just heard. So this intro happens over two chords. It's gonna be a G chord and a C chord, and it's gonna be 1, 2, and 3. And so we're switching to the C chord on the up strum.

One, two, and three.

And.

Okay, one, two, and three.

And so that's down, down, up, down, up. Ready?

Now there's a second guitar that plays a little bit of a lead line over that. So there is two guitars in this. In this song. So don't be too distracted by some of the higher notes you're going to hear. But if you are fast enough, you can get between these two parts. So the other guitar is playing fifth fret on the G string, third fret on the E string, back to the fifth fret on the G string, and then the fifth fret on the high E string. So you can see what I'm doing here. I'll leave my fingers on the guitar. You can see the third finger is here, the first fingers back here. And I'm using my pinky to grab that high note. All right, so again, it's.

So if I put that whole thing together, it's.

Now you might want to practice going between those two if you want to play the lead line. If not, you can just play the strumming and that will work just fine. So let's talk about the different sections of the song. How I would play them simply how we can embellish them a little bit. So let's talk about the verses to this song. They start with the G chord, a D chord, a C chord, and an A minor chord. All right? Then we have G, E minor, A minor, D. And then it repeats that again. G, D, C, A minor, G, E minor, A minor, B minor, D. Okay, and that's the first verse that we're going to be going through. The second verse follows a very similar pattern, but there's some timing differences. So first let's talk about what we can do on these verses. So now that we've gone over the cool little intro part, we're going to go into the different strumming patterns that you can use on this song. So I always like to try and keep things simple and I'll give you guys some embellishments that you can use because I always like you guys to have options in variety. You can play it as hard as you want or as easy as you want. Now, for this song, most of the chords are splitting two measures, meaning most of the chords are going to be two beats. So if you're just a beginner, you can just do G, G, D, D, C, C, A minor. Okay. That's the simplest one that we can do just to get you through the song. Okay. And if you can't play that intro part, don't worry about it. Just start with the verses. Remember, the guitar is all about having fun. You could always make things harder down the road. But right now, play with the level you're at and just have as much fun as possible for where you're at right now. So if you want to spice it up just a little bit, if you listen to the original, which I was listening to earlier, you can hear a very distinct down, down, down, up. Okay.

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

Alright, so that would be 1, 2 and a 3, 4 and a 1, 2 and a 3, four and a. So if I just played the first line of the verse, this is what it would sound like.

So that's a little bit of a 16th note pattern. 1, 2 and a 3, 4. And you can use that for the entirety of the song, if you want. Now, there's a couple little more embellishments you can add, but I'll go over those later when we get into the final verses to show you where you can add those in. So the. So the chord progression for the verse, it's pretty simple. It's. It is somewhat repetitive, although some of the timing changes on the N. So we have a G chord, a D chord, C, A minor, G, E minor, A minor, D. And it repeats that twice our. Right, that's the simplest version. If you wanted to spice it up a little bit, Instead of playing the D for the second chord, you could play a D F sharp. And instead of the first A minor, you could play an A minor seven instead. That's going to make it sound more like the song. But if you don't know those chords, just stick with the regular D in the regular A minor. I might refer to some of those other chords throughout this tutorial, but if you don't know them, just always revert back to the easier versions of the chords. So let's go through our verse section. So we got.

It's not time to make a change. Just relax and take it easy. You're still young that's your fault there's so much you to know.

Okay, and then we're gonna repeat.

Find a girl, settle down if you want, you can marry.

That's the A minor 7.

Look at me, I'm not old but I am happ.

Now this section, it's A minor splitting, a D chord. But if you want to be a little bit fancy, you can take that A minor chord and you can go down on A minor. Lift up your third finger for a minor 7.

Do the down, down, up.

And then do a D chord.

So to sound like this.

So you hear that again. So it's one down strum on A minor, lift up the third finger for A minor seven.

Down, down, up.

And then the D we would play.

Normally down, down, down, up.

So if I just take that last line again to be calm when you.

Have found something going on.

It's a very slight change, but you'll hear it in the music if you listen for it. So if you feel comfortable adding that in. Awesome. Again, if not, just stick with the A minor and the D. Now moving on to the next line of the verse, we go back to G. But.

Take your time and think along. Think of everything. You've got A minor seven.

Now here there's a timing change. All right? There's a lot of these little time signature Changes. So very briefly, we go to 5, 4. So this song has been in 4. 4. 4. 4 means four beats per measure. 1, 2, 3, 4. Remember I said each chord is two beats in the beginning. In this section, we have two chords that are going to be two beats. The G chord and the E minor chord. And then that last D chord is going to be 1B. So it'll sound like this.

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

And that's it for that line. And then we go right back to our intro.

So altogether, that last line would sound like this 1, 2, and a 3.

4, and a 5.

So that's our verse section. The next part is going to be the chorus section. How can I try to explain? This is where our B minor chord comes in. And everything here is again two measures. Nothing's really going to change on the strumming other than we have some timing things on the end I want to discuss. So real quick, the chord progression is G, B minor, C, A minor seven, G, E minor, A minor seven, D, G, B minor, C, A minor seven, G, E minor. And then this D, this measure where it's D and G. The D is one beat and the G is three. Three beats. Okay? And then immediately after that we have a D for two beats, a C for one beat. So that's one measure of three, four. And then we go back to.

Okay, so this is the tricky part with this song are these time signature things that change. So again, let me just go through that last line, starting from the G and E minor. So we have G for two beats.

E minor for two beats. Then we have D, G.

D.

C.

So if I put that in musical context for you. Let me take it. From the moment I could talk from.

The moment I could talk I was ordered to listen now there's a way and I know I have to go away I know I have to go.

Now the thing with that is think more of the lyrics.

I know I have to go so.

Those chord changes, even though the timing is a little weird, the chords change over the lyrics. Even on the part I have to.

Go away I know I have to.

Go so use those lyrics to help you out timing wise on that chorus section. So the solo section of the song, I think would be a great opportunity to really open things up. Okay. And again, like providing you guys with options, you can always keep it simple. All right, it's. The chord progression is G, D, C.

A minor 7 to G, E minor.

A minor 7, D. Okay, then we got a G, D C a minor 7. We have another one of those five fingers, four lines where we have G for two measures, E minor for two measures, then we have D. Then we have G for three counts, 1, 2, 3, D for two counts, 1, 2, C for one C. And then we get back to.

So now that you know the chord progression, let's talk about the little embellishments, the extra strumming that we can do on this song. So, so you could just simply go.

Down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down and keep it.

But again, I think this is a great opportunity to.

So you heard I kind of added some cool little things in there and did some extra stuff on the D chord. So what am I doing here? So this is again another 16th note strumming pattern. So this is going to be 1.

2, E and A, 3, 4, E and A. So it's down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up.

Okay.

Again.

Then it's going to be followed by.

A down, down, down.

Okay, three downs on the C. Down.

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

So that's 1, 2 and A, E, A 4, E and A. Okay, up, up, up, down, up, down, up. So you're doing three up strums in a row. So we have four downs on the C. One, two. And all you have to do is lift up the third finger for a minor 7, A, E, A 4, E and A. So it'll sound like this.

Okay, so if I put those two together, it sounds like this.

Okay, that's what that section sounds like. Now the next one, doing the same thing on the G and The E minor 1, 2, E and A 3.

4, E and A.

A minor 7 starts out the same way. We've got 1, 2, 3. Now it's the same strum except we're going to go to a D chord but we're going to play with this D sus 4D chord. DSus 2.

Okay. Very popular. You could play, play Free Falling with it.

Very common thing that pops up in music. Think Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine is another good example. Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven. I think they do it.

Okay, so lots of songs use this, this little D suspended thing. And I don't think he does it exactly this way, but I think it adds a nice little spice to the song. So, so what we're doing, the strumming is the same. Okay, so we've got The A minor 7 is 1, 2 and. Okay, we're going to go to DSUS 4 first. So we've got up. We're going to lift up our pinky so that we get a regular D. Then we're going to lift up our second finger so we get the SUS 2. Okay, so so far we got 1, 2 and A, E, A. Okay, now we've got 4 E. We're going to stay on the SUS and then. And is D is 4. All right, so let me do that again. So we've got 1, 2 and a, e, a 4e and ah. Okay. Okay. So that all that together is.

Okay. So it's just like this really cool way to mix up this D suspended. So let me play that whole section again, that whole solo section. So we got.

And again, I think I improvised it a slightly different way there. But you guys can play around with this little idea. You don't have to add or take in as many in notes. You could keep it simple, you know.

You could just play a DSUS 4 if you want and hold. That just gives a little bit of a different element that draws the ear in. So then after that we have another verse which basically is just a replica of the first verse we played. There's nothing funny timing wise. And then we have another second chorus which is the same chord wise as the original chorus. Okay. It has the same time things with the D being one measure, the G being three, and the three quarter time. So the only thing on the ending now is you're just gonna hold the G instead of going back into.

You just.

I know I have to know.

So let's put everything into a play along. Now what I would recommend, because there's a lot going on, I would recommend watching the play along all the way through and listening to what I do and the different dynamics. Okay. Because there's some soft and low in this as well. And then what I would do is come back and try a play along again. If you need to slow it down, you can turn the settings cog down there and that will slow things down. So you can play along with me.

There's not time to make a change well, just relax and take it easy you're still young that's your fault there's so much you have to know Find a girl and settle down if you want you can marry. Look at me I am old but I am happy.

I was once like you are now I know that it's not easy to become when you have found something going on but take your time and think a lot why Think of everything you've got for you'll still be here tomorrow but your dreams may not.

Oh, how can I try to explain? Do he turns away? It's always been the same old story.

From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen. Now they're still away And I know I have to go away And I know la.

Well it's not time to make a change. Just sit down and take it easy. You're still young but that's not your fault. There's so much you have to go through. Find a girl and settle down. If you want you can marry. Look at me. I am old but I am happy.

At times I have cried Even all the things I knew inside. But it's hard but it's harder to ignore it.

You might and I'd agree with that. There's them, they know not me. Now there's a way And I know I have to go away And I know I have to go.

If you guys are looking for another song that's really fun, that has a cool intro, you can check out my CCR down on the corner Lesson over there. That's great for beginners as well. Go check that out.