The EASIEST Taylor Swift Song? Today Was A Fairytale Guitar Lesson

I'm going to show you one of the easiest Taylor Swift songs to play on the guitar. We're going to be learning today was a fairy tale. It only has four chords. An E minor chord, a C chord, a G chord, and a D chord. And what I'm going to do is going to show you two sets of chords. So the first set is going to be more for people who are kind of absolute beginners just getting started with the guitar. And if you're a little bit more of a late beginner, fast forward ahead and I'll show you the chords. Taylor's probably using this song.

So for those of you just getting started, a quick view on my four easy chords. That's why I like this Taylor Swift song is we use my two finger versions. We have E minor, okay? So an E minor chord. So you have your first and second fingers on the second fret of the fifth string and the fourth string, okay? And the reason I make my E minor chord like this is because when I want to shift into a C chord, I can just use move my first finger down to the first fret on that B string, okay? And then when I want to get to a G chord, I just leave the first finger in place and I shift to a G chord this way, okay? So we have E minor. To get to C, you move your first finger, okay? And that's going to the first fret on the B string. And to get to G, you're just moving your second finger up to the third fret on the top string, okay? So from an E minor to C, you move the first finger. From E minor to G, you move the second finger. Makes things a little bit easier, especially if you're just getting started on the guitar. Now there's no easy way to pivot in and out of the D chord. You're just gonna have to lift the fingers. You can play what we call a DSUS2 chord. It's a very nice open sounding chord. So if you went from that E minor chord, you move the first finger one, two strings down, we're in the second fret. And then the third finger is going to end up on the third fret of the B string. And if you feel it's easier, you could put the pinky down. This is a DSUS 4 and this is actually probably the chord that Taylor is using in the song. So we have E minor, C, E minor, G, EE Minor and DSAUS2. So you can practice those. And if you're ready, you could move on to the late Beginner chords, which are my stuck like glue chords, which. Let's start at that dsus4 that I just showed you now with the stuck like glue chords. The key with these is the third finger in the pinky. Stay glued to the bottom two strings. Okay? So I have my third fret on the B and E strings, and I have the pinky on the bottom. And the third finger is right on top of it. Now, I already showed you the Dsus 4, which is the first finger on the second. And the great thing about this, when we want to get to the E minor chord, you just move the first and second fingers in place. Another reason why I use the first and second finger on my E minor chords. This is more like an E minor 7 chord to get to G. Same thing. You just move that second finger up. And then to get to the C chord, known as C add nine, we're going to take these two fingers and we're going to drop them one string. Okay? So let's take that again from that D chord. So we have pinky and third finger on the bottom two str strings. Add the first finger to the B string or, sorry, G string, second fret. We strum the bottom four strings. That's going to be DSUS 4. Move everything up to that E minor position. We have E minor 7. Second finger comes up for the G chord. These two fingers come down for C add 9. And these are going to be the chords we're going to be using throughout the entire song. Now, the reason I love this Taylor Swift song is because the chord progression, the order in which we play the chords of the song, is the same throughout the entire song. So it's G, C, E minor D. Okay. And for most of the verses, we're splitting the measure between these chords. That means each chord is going to get two beats or two strums. We're going to start off very, very simply here. So it's going to be G2 strums, C2 strums, E minor 2 strums, and then D2 strums. It's going to sound something like this.

So that's what we're doing for most of the of the verses. Now there is a little change up. I just noticed Taylor does switch it up a little bit on the end of the second verse. She plays the E minor four times. When the time slows down them to A D, then C.

And then back to D.

So that's the only change that we have in the song. The rest of it is that same Chord progression. So what I'm going to do with you right now, I want to play through the verse, the first couple verses in the courses with that simple strumming pattern. All right. And we'll go a little bit slower, so since you're just learning. And then I'm going to show you another strumming pattern you can use to spice things up once you start getting the feel for the timing of this song. So let's take it from the top. So we got 1, 2, 3. Ready? Slowly.

Today was a fairy tale? You were the prince I used to be the damsel in distress you took me by the hand and you picked me up at 6? Today was a fairy tale.

Today was a fairy tale.

Today was a fairy tale I wore a dress you were a dark gray t shirt? You told me I was pretty when I looked like a mess today was.

A fairy tale Time slows down whenever you're around.

Oh, here's the chorus.

Ready? Well, can you feel this magic in the air? It must have been the weird christmas I fell in love when I saw you standing there must have been the way today was a fairy tale.

So that's a great way to get started with the timing of the song really focusing on. And that was a little bit slower than it would probably be played. But in the beginning, when you're working on these songs, you really want to focus on the timing. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. Okay. Get that timing nice and smooth because then you can graduate to a different strumming pattern like this more late beginner strumming pattern. So this is what it's going to sound like, and you're going to hear it going to start sounding a lot more like the song.

So you can see we picked up the pace a little bit, so we're a little bit more in tempo with how fast the song actually is. And what we're doing now for each strumming pattern is we're going down, down, down, up. So it's down, down, down, up. Okay. Down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up. In the top timing of this, I'm just holding on to a g chord for now. Is going to be one, two, and a three, four, and a one, two, and a three thousand four, and a one, two,. And a three, four, and a 1, 2, and a 3, 4, and a down, down, down.

So what I want to do is I want to play the next verse in chorus using this other strumming pattern. And then we're going to talk about the bridge section of the song where things change up just a little bit. So we got one, two, new strumming pattern.

Today was a fairy tale. You got a smile that takes me to another planet Every move you make everything you say is right Today was a fairy tale Today was a fairy tale All I can say is now getting so much, much clearer nothing made sense till the time I saw your face today was a fairy tale Time.

Slows down whenever you're around.

Here's the chorus. Ready?

Can you feel this magic in the air? Muscle in the way you kiss me I fell in love when I saw your cinnamon it must have been the way Today was a fairy tale.

So now we have this bridge section where the time kind of slows down, but we're going to do something a little bit different with the strumming here. And so this is what happens when you learn songs. A lot of times you'll just do that first drawing pattern all the way through. Or maybe you'll do the second pattern all the way through. But when you start learning songs, you want to build dynamics. And that's the great thing about Taylor Swift and a lot of her songs. There's a lot of dynamics in her songs. So for this bridge, we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to play all down strums, but we're going to play them as eighth notes, okay? And eighth notes are counted 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And it's going to sound like this.

Okay? So that's what it's gonna sound like. It's gonna be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Okay, so if we play this over, this bridge part now, it's gonna be like this. 2, 3, 4.

Time slows down whenever you.

Feel my heart sp.

With I can put this down.

Till the chorus. Ready?

Can you feel this music in the air and the way you kiss me I fell in love when I saw you standing there must have been away. Today is a fairy tale so you.

Can see come right out of that bridge and you're jumping right back in to the chorus section, bringing this song back up and making it come to life. Now, if you enjoyed this Taylor Swift lesson and want to learn how to further develop your strumming, then go check out that video right over there where I'm going to show you how to play seven different types of strumming patterns from one single rhythm. Go check it out right now.