Time of Your Life Green Day Guitar Lesson - Strumming & Picking Patterns

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. Lauren Bateman here. In this video, we're going to go over a super awesome song by Green Day. It's called Time of youf Life. We're going to go over how to play the verses, how to play the choruses, how to do the strumming and the picking. I can't wait to show you guys. So let's get started.

The first thing to talk about in this video is the chords that we will be using. We're going to be using my stuck like glue cords, okay? And if you haven't learned those chords, put a link in the description below and you can go over and learn those chords. But that's what we're going to be using in this video. If you need the chord chart for this video, just go to my website. I'll also put that in the description below too. So let's get started on the picking for the verse. When this song starts, it starts off with a little bit of a picking pattern. So we want to go over how to pick this verse. So the chords are G, g and then CAD9 and then the D suspended chord. And then we repeat that. G, G, C, add nine, D suspended. So let's go over how to start that. So for this G chord, what we're going to do is we're going to start by picking 6, 4, 2, 3, 4. So we're skipping a string here. That's the picking pattern. That's the string numbers. 6, 6, 4, 2, 34 6, 4, 2, 3, 4. One more time. 6, 4, 2, 3, 4. And that's how we're going to be playing the G chord. Now my picking on my right hand.

Is going down, down, down, up, up, down, down, down, up, up.

That's how we're playing our G chord. And feel free to rewind this a few times if you need to go through it. But. But I'm going to move ahead to our C chord next. Now it's easy going from G to C. Add nine. We just move the top two fingers down. But the picking pattern here is going to be five, four, two, three, four. So we're still skipping a string. Five, four, two, three, 4, 5, 4, 2, 3, 4.

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

Same kind of pattern as the G chord we just did, but a little bit different. Let's go talk about our D chord, which is the next chord in this progression. So sticking with our string skipping theme, when we get down to this D suspended chord, we're going to do the fourth string, third string first string, second string.

So it's the same thing.

Down, down, down, up, up, four, three.

That's how we're gonna play this D chord in this song. The final chord we need to talk about is our kind of E minor 7 chord. And we're gonna play it the same way as a G chord because it's a six string chord. But just to reiterate, it's gonna be 6, 5, 6, 5, 6, 4, 2, 3, 4, 6, 4, 2, three, four. Waiting for my morning coffee to kick in. But that's what it's gonna be. It's the second same way as playing a G chord. So when we get into the second half of this verse, the chord progression is going to change. So we have E minor D, C, G, E minor D, C, G. And you're going to use the sus and the add nines. I'm just saying it for simplicity, but Yeah, E minor DSUS 4C. Add 9G. We're going to play that twice. All right. And so you're just switching up the order of the picking pattern. So it's an E minor to a D, a D to a C, a C to a G. And that's it. That's what we got for the verse. So let's talk about how we're going to pick the chorus now. So the first chorus of this song is picked and then we jump into strumming, which we'll go over next. But all we are doing, we're using the same picking patterns that I just discussed for all of the chords. Just the progression changes. It's E minor G, E minor G, E minor D and then G. So if I pick three, that part. Because we're going to start strumming at the end of this, which we're going to go over next. So if we go through, it's something unpredictable.

In the end, it's right. I hope you had the time of your life.

So that last G in the chorus marks where we're going to start our strumming pattern. So let's talk about how we're going to strum it. If you guys have liked this video so far, make sure to give a like below comment. Let me know that you're enjoying it. And don't forget to subscribe to the channel. So let's go check out that strumming pattern. So this is a very, very simple strumming pattern that we're going to use for the rest of the song. Except for the very, very end of the song, which we'll talk about In a little bit. So the chorus, we go back to the verse. So the chord progressions are not changing at all. All that's changing is the strumming pattern we're no longer picking. And we're going to be using a syncopated strumming pattern, which is down, down.

Up, up, down, up.

So it's going to be 1, 2.

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

And I'm playing a G chord here.

So it's down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, 1, 2, and, and 4, and 1, 2, and, and four and.

So that's the strumming pattern that we're going to use. And we will use that on the next verse, the chorus, the instrumental, until we get to the very end of the song. At the very end of the song, we have one final chorus and things are going to change up a little bit here. We're going to work on back into picking. So this last chorus is going to be the picking patterns that we were talking about. So what I would do for this song when you're practicing is I would go from trying to strum right into picking it.

I would work on that because if you've never done that before, it can be quite tricky. So I would really focus on working on that transition. So learn the verses, learn the choruses separately and then try and put them all together. I have many more guitar songs outside of this one. I really hope you enjoyed the lesson. Don't forget to, like, comment, comment and again, subscribe if you haven't already. And over here you're going to see some videos that YouTube is going to suggest for you to try out. So go check out some of my other lesson videos and I hope to see you guys in the next lesson.