In this YouTube lesson, guitarist Lauren Bateman walks the viewer through playing the Cranberries’ 1990s track “Ode to My Family.” She begins by explaining the essential capo placement on the 2nd fret and introduces the chord set (Am, Em, C, and an F‑type chord) while offering beginner‑friendly alternatives for the often‑tricky F chord. The core of the tutorial focuses on a detailed fingerpicking pattern: thumb handling bass notes on specific strings, the use of the index (1) and middle (2) fingers for plucking, and a repeatable sequence (pluck‑1‑thumb‑2‑1‑thumb…) applied to each chord, including a special variation for the F‑suspended chord. Lauren then addresses the rhythm, providing a counting framework (1 & 2 & e & 4 &) and encourages learners to hum or sing the pattern to internalize timing. She explains how the intro is fingerpicked while the chorus shifts to a strumming pattern (down‑up sequences with occasional double‑downs), and she demonstrates both sections, offering tips for tempo control, open‑string handling during chord changes, and how to adapt the part for performance. The lesson concludes with a brief playthrough, a note on using treble‑only picking for live play, and a plug for a related Cranberries lesson on “Zombie.”
Chapters
Hey guitar enthusiasts, Lauren Bateman here, and I have an awesome '90s song by the Cranberries called Ode to My Family. Sending this one out to Abby, who performed this in our student recital. It was such a cool song, I was like, I have to learn this and do a lesson on it. So this lesson is going to incorporate strumming, and it's going to incorporate fingerpicking because there's a really cool intro, uh, picking sections to this song. So I'm going to show you how to play that step by step as well as how to strum along to the song. So first, let's start off with our chords. The first thing I want to note is we got a capo on the 2nd fret here, okay? So all of our chords, everything is going to be played with the capo on the 2nd fret. And our chords are going to be A minor, E minor, C, and an F chord. Now if you're like, oh Lauren, I hate the F chord, just use an F major chord, okay? I think for this song it sounds, um, really great because on the intro we're kind of playing like almost like this, an F suspended chord. Um, so I think if you do F major 7 on this, this song, it's perfectly fine because this song has such an open feel to it. So if you can't do bar chords, don't worry, you can still play this song. You can play a C chord, you just move your second finger down one and you put your pinky right below that third finger. It's a very, very easy transition into that. All right, so I have a pick in my hand right now, but I'm gonna put that down. All right, I'm gonna be using my fingers. I'm gonna be using fingers thumb, 1, and 2. Okay, let me just play what we're gonna be learning very slowly. Okay, all right, so that's what it sounds like. It's already sounding like the Cranberry song. So what am I doing? So the chords I'm using It's a C chord followed by an A minor chord followed by an E minor chord, and then I'm calling this an F suspended chord. First fret on the B string, it is the third fret on the D string, and an open G string. Okay, we're only playing those three strings, so it sounds great. So the first thing we're gonna be doing is we're going to be doing what we call a pluck. All right, so we're going to be using our thumb to kind of play these bass notes, okay, which is going to be the fifth string, the fourth string, and then on our E minor chord it'll be the 6th string. So our thumb is kind of playing our bass notes. And when we have our C chord, we are going to pluck the 5th string and the B string at the same time using our thumb and our 2nd finger. Okay, thumb and 2nd finger. And then it's gonna be 1 picking the open G string. Okay, that's the first 2 notes. And then we're gonna have the thumb play the bass note on the 4th string. Okay, it's gonna be the same thing for the A minor chord. So as long as you're playing the right chord, it's the same thing. The E minor chord, the first 4 notes are— we're gonna move the thumb up to the 6th string now. Okay, so for all those chords, it's the same. Okay, that's C, A minor, and then E minor. Okay, and fortunately it's also the same for the second half. So let's do the second half now. So we have the first 4 notes, and then we're gonna go 2, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb. Okay, so it's pluck, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb. That's not the rhythm. We'll talk about the rhythm in a second. We're just going to learn the pattern, then we'll talk about the rhythm. So again, pluck, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb. Same thing on the A minor chord. Pluck, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb. On the E minor, pluck, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb. And now the F suspended, we're going to pluck. This time it's going to be the D and the B strings. So it's pluck, 1, thumb. Now the thumb is just gonna hang out on that D string. So it's pluck, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb. So the pattern mostly remains the same on that final chord. So if I go from the beginning again, it's going to be Pluck 1 thumb, 2, 1 thumb, 2, 1 thumb.
Pluck 1 thumb, 2, 1 thumb, 2, 1 thumb.
Pluck 2— ah! Pluck 1 thumb, 2, 1 thumb, 2, 1 thumb. 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb, 2, 1, thumb. All right, so that's the general mechanics. Now we're going to talk about the rhythm. We've got to get this to sound more like the song. So it has kind of like— so the timing that I wrote down on this is 1 and, 2 and, e and, 4 and, which is very, very hard to count. Okay, so I always tell people one of the secret powers that one of my teachers told me is you are a singer. And if you could sing something, you can play it. So I'm going to encourage you on this to hum it with me. Okay? And that's what we're going to play on the guitar. So it's 1 and 2. E and e and 4 and 1 and 2. E and e 4 and 1 and 2.
E e 4 and 1 and 2. E, n, e and 4.
4, and that's the timing. So let's try it a couple times together. You can even— if I'm still going too fast, you can always use the settings cog to slow this down. And I do have all the notes on my website as well. And before we do a playthrough, I just want to make a note, because if you look at the tab, um, you're going to see the last note is played open. Um, but if you're watching me play slowly, I'm sometimes hitting the note. So for example, what do I mean? On the first measure you see the D string, the 2nd fret is being played, and then the last note, it's open. That's just incorporating the chord change. Chances are when you play this up to speed, if you hit that note, great, but chances are when you're changing to the next chord, you're gonna probably be playing that note open. So I just wanted to make a note for that. So if you are playing this slow enough, you probably have enough time to actually play the note, but once this starts going, you get up to speed, you're probably gonna be playing that last note open to accommodate for the chord change. So let's try and do this together. All right, slowly. I will try and play the open string so that it's as written here. Ready? Here we go. And you can always use the setting— if I'm still going too fast, use that settings cog, slow me down. Here we go. 1, 2, here we go. So that's what you need to do. You just need to work on that very, very slowly, um, to get that part down. So that is the picking section of this song, and now we're going to talk about the strumming section, which mainly happens on the chorus. Okay, so the verse section, the intro section is picked, um, and then the chorus section is strum. So let me— you can, if you know, if you're finger picking, you would use your thumb for the down strums and your first finger for the up strums. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. I'm going to use the pick so just so you can hear the guitar a little clearer, um, but the strumming pattern is going to be down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down. Up, down, up, down, which is 1, a 2, the and, the and, a 4, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. Okay, so if I put that into the chord progression, which is C, A minor, E minor, F major 7— if you want to use that, I'm going to play the F, but you can use the F major 7— it's going to sound like this. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. All right, that's all we're going to be doing on this chorus section of the song. Okay, so again, it— once you get into it, whether you know 16th 16th note rhythms or not.
If you're just like down up down up down up down up down and down up down up down up down up down and down up down up down up down up down.
And so if you're someone who knows the melody or knows how to sing melodies, if you can sing the strumming pattern, you can play it. Even if you don't know exactly if it's a 16th note, 8th note, what's the note— if you can just do that, you can do rhythm on the guitar. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a playthrough, but I'm going to do it a little bit differently because it is very, very hard to sing and pick this song at the same time. I haven't put that amount of practice in. Um, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to start off the intro just by doing single strums as if I was going to perform this, um, for an audience. And then I am going to, um, just strum the verses and the choruses But whenever there's an interlude, I'm going to pick the intro. Um, so this way, if you want to do the picking over it, you can. I'm not going to be playing the bass notes, I'm just going to be playing the treble notes. My picking is going to sound like this. Okay, so what I've done is I've removed the pluck on the chord and I'm just playing the treble notes as written. All right, so let's take this from the top and give it a try. I'm not going to try to, to match the vocal integrity of our singer, but I will do my best. And the cranberries are great, so let's give it a try. Here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4.
Understand the things I say. Don't turn away from me. 'Cause I spent half my life out there. I wouldn't disagree. You see me?
Do you see?
Do you like me? Do you like me standing there? Do you notice? Do you know? Do you see me? Do you see me? Does anyone care? Happiness was when I was young and we didn't give a damn. 'Cause we were raised to see life as fun and take it if we can. My mother, my mother, she'd hold me She'd hold me when I was out there. My father, my father, he liked me. Oh, he liked me. Does anyone care? Understand what I've become. It wasn't my desire. And people everywhere think something better than I am. But I miss you. I miss— I liked it. 'Cause I liked it when I was out there. You know this. You know you did not mind. Well, then that's fine. Does anyone care? Unhappiness was when I was young and we didn't give a damn. As we were raised to see life as fun, take it every weekend. My mother, my mother, she hold me, she hold me when I was out there. My father, my father, he likes me. you liked me. Does anyone care? Does anyone care? Does anyone care? Does anyone care?
Does anyone care?
Does anyone care? Does anyone care? Does anyone care?
Well, that is a super fun song, and if you really like the Cranberries, I have another great Cranberries song called Zombie right over there. Super fun song to play, easy song to play as well. Go check that out and I'll teach you how to play that step by step, just like this song here.
