Step-By-Step Zombie Guitar Lesson with COOL Lead Line

So I have a great four chord song by the Cranberries called Zombie. We're going to do this kind of at the beginner level here. And those chords are going to be an E minor chord, a C major chord, a G major chord, and this interesting chord called D, F sharp. Now, something to tell you about this chord, it is just a D chord, okay. With the F sharp note on the bass. Now, if you're playing, playing with the band, ideally the bass player would play that F sharp note. Now, because we're playing by ourselves, we're gonna kind of have to incorporate for the bass player. So what I like to do when I'm playing this, if you have enough stretch in your fingers, is I play a normal D chord and then I wrap my thumb over the top to grab the bass note. Okay. This is the F sharp note on the second fret. Now, for some of you, if you're a beginner and you don't have a lot of flexibility, that's not going to work out for you. It's going to be very, very difficult. So you could just play the regular D chord and it will sound perfectly fine. It just won't have as dark of a tone as the normal song. Now, the other thing, you probably saw me play my G chord like this. You could use the pinky as well. Whichever way works for you is fine. I do like making my E minor chord with my first and second fingers because it creates a nice little pivot, all right. For you to be able to go right into that C chord. So now that we know the chords we're going to be using for this song, let's talk a little bit about the strumming dynamics you're going to be using throughout.

So the great thing about Zombie is there's a lot of really softs and really, really highs. There's a lot of dynamic variation. So we're going to work on different strumming things that we can do throughout the song to build and condense this song. Now, the song has a really intense intro and the chord progression for this song, which is really great, is the same throughout the entire song. It's E minor, C, G and D, or D with the F sharp, if you decide to use that. And then it's just those four chords over and over again. It's the strumming pattern that's going to vary. So say you're a student in my seven level course. You'd probably start off by using one of our level one strumming patterns, which is just one Strum per chord and letting it ring. Okay, now on the record you will hear someone doing a little bit more of a.

You're going to just hear an acoustic guitar doing some really, really intricate strumming. But if you're a beginner, that can be bit tricky for you guys to do. So we're just going to do one strum per chord, alright? E minor, C.

G and then D. Now once we do that once again the drums are going to kick in on the record and we're going to go to an eighth note strumming pattern. Now what's an eighth note strumming pattern? We're going to count that as 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And it means we're going to be doing eight down strums for each chord. So it's going to sound like this. Let's take the E minor chord. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

All right. So you can hear it has a very dark sound. And the reason it has that dark sound, if you notice I'm not strumming the entire chord, I'm just kind of catching the top half of the chord. So if you're someone where you're like oh, you know, my C chord doesn't sound so great, you technically could just make your C chord which is the top two fingers and it'll work just fine because we're not strumming the entire chord. Alright, so those are the two patterns you're going to be using for the intro. And I'm going to show you what we're going to do for the chord. So let's go just go through this intro part. We have one strum, we're gonna do all four chords, one strum. Then we're gonna go through twice with the eighth note pattern and then we're gonna end again with one strum. Let's practice that right now. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4, E minor 2, 3, 4 to C to G.

And then the D.

Eighth notes. Ready? 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And.

Again here we go back to E minor.

One strum, two, three, four.

Now there's a really cool little lead line on this intro that I'm going to show you a little bit later. It sounds like this.

Okay, I'm going to show you how to play that a little bit later in the video because it does come in at the end of this intro. It also comes in at the end of our choruses. So it's a Little nice, little embellishment to add in. But first, let's jump into the verses. So again, the dynamics have come down now. Okay, We've had the drums, the band has come in, the dynamics have come down. So for the first part of this verse, again, we're just going to do single strums. Okay? So we'll do that chord progression twice through its single strums. And then once we get into the pre chorus section, which is. But you see, it's not me. When we get to that line, we're going to jump back into eighth notes. But what I want you to be aware of here is we're not going as intense as we did on that intro. Okay, we really dug in on the intro. We want to save a little bit of energy for the chorus. So what happens with a lot of beginner students is we have two volumes. We have soft and really loud. So we want to try working on dynamics. So instead of all your strums sounding like this.

You know, that kind of that harsh. And just a little tip for you guys, if you are a beginner and you're using a thicker pick, I would consider this a little bit thicker. This is 0.88 millimeters. You could use a thinner pick. And it will take a little bit of the curse off the strumming. But what we want to do is kind of have three levels of strumming. Really light. Okay. A little bit more medium.

And then loud.

So here on the loud, I'm really at the attacking the strings of the guitar. So on this verse, we want to have a little bit more of a medium to light strumming when we get to that eighth notes. All right, so let's take it through this verse and I'm going to show you what we're going to do on the chorus. We're going to add in some little accents and if you need to follow along with any of the notes, I do have the strumming patterns and the chords. Over on my website, Lauren Bateman dot com. Let's take it from the verse. Ready? One, two, two. Here we go. Another head hangs lowly child is slowly taken 2, 3, 4 and the violins cause such silence who are we mistaken? Eighth notes. Ready? Do you see?

It's not me, it's not my family it's in your head, in your head they are fighting with the tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns in your head in your head they are gu.

So you see, at the end of that verse, I did what's called a Crescendo in music. I went from kind of a light strumming pattern.

To a much more aggressive strumming pattern. So we call that a crescendo in music when you go from low to a much more intense. So it's starting light 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And by the time I get to the end of that, it's building me up to go into this chorus because everything, the vocals, everything becomes really, really intense at this stage on the chorus. And I'm going to show you what I do to the strumming pattern to add a little bit of spice. Now this spice coming in is a little bit more of like a late beginner type pattern. Okay. Because we're going to try accenting the first beat and the and after the second beat. Okay. So we're going to be making the first beat a little bit louder and then the and after two, a little bit louder. What do I mean? Let me show you first.

So now that I played through on that, there's actually going to be three accents we're hitting. It's going to be the one, the and after two, and then the four. This is a very, very common accented rhythm. It's used a lot in rock music. So it has this rhythm. Let's clap first. Sometimes it's easier to do these things away from the guitar. And it's going to be one and two and three and four. One and two and three and four. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and four. All right, so we're clapping on one, the and after two and the four. All right, that's our accent.

Okay. That's what we're trying to do with our guitar. In our strumming, we're doing it over an eighth note pattern. So it's going to be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4and 1.

So you can see it adds a little bit more depth to. To the strumming versus just going.

Okay. And if you're a beginner, there's absolutely nothing wrong with just doing the eighth notes. I just wanted to give you guys a little bit of spice. So let's play through this chorus, and I'm going to throw the little intro on the end here and then show you how to play that step by step. One, two. Ready with that tank and their bombs.

And their bombs Their thumbs in your head, your hand they are crying.

Oh.

Single slow.

So let's talk about this little lead line that we can add in on the end of the intros or on the end of these choruses, it does come back into the song. So if you saw me just play. Most of these notes are going to be on our high E string and we're going to be doing hammer ons and pull offs. So if you're more a beginner, it might be tricky for you, but you can just play the single notes. Okay. You don't have to do the hammers. You could go.

On the record. They are doing these hammer ons and pull offs. But let's take it step by step and I'll show you how to play it. So we're starting on the seventh fret and we're going seven, eight. Okay. And ideally you would want to hammer this, but you can just pick the two notes individually if you're a real beginner. But if you're someone who has enough strength, you could do what we call a hammer on, which is you pick the note and then you hammer down the second finger onto the eighth fret. So it's one pick motion, two notes. And I always tell people the thing with hammer ons, it's. You know, there is a strength component to it, but there's a speed component. It's like snapping your finger. If you go fast, you get a snap. If you go slow, the snap dies. Same thing with hammer ons. If you go slow, it's gonna mute. So there's strength and speed. Okay. Or just pick the two notes, make it simple. Okay. And then when you get better, you can work on the hammer on. So this is the first two notes, seven, eight.

Then the next notes is going to be five, seven, okay. Or hammer and then three, five. Okay. So it's seven, eight, five, seven, three, five, two, three, two. And this is one pick, three notes. So it's a hammer on and a pull off. And if you can't do that, just pick the notes. Totally fine. So those are all the notes on the high E string. Let's do that one more time. So 7, 8, 5, 7, 3, 5, 2, 3, 2.

Okay, 7, 8, 5, 7th, 3, 5, 2, three, two.

And then we're going to come up with the second finger. So we just went 2, 3, 2. We're going to use that same second finger to come up on the third fret of the B string. You're gonna play that twice. And then the open string. Okay. So the whole thing is.

Now where this comes in over the music. So it comes in over the G chord.

So it's.

So the timing on this would be.

1, and, and 3, 4, and. And 2 and 3, 4, 1.

Okay, that's where that sits over that eighth note timing. So all of those first three are over the G chord. So this is G chord.

Then it changes to the D chord.

And then E minor.

So if you enjoyed that little intro piece and playing along to Lead line, then I highly recommend you go check out my Finger Dexterity playlist right over there where I show you how to play along and have fun to lots of intros to cool songs.