Lauren Bateman presents a beginner-friendly YouTube guitar lesson demonstrating a simplified two-chord arrangement of the Beatles' 'Eleanor Rigby' using E minor and C. She explains fingerings (pivoting the second finger to move between Em and C), offers two strumming options (four down strums per chord and an eighth-note all-down pattern), advises on dark vs brighter tone by strumming top strings selectively, and performs playthroughs (intro, verse, chorus) while pointing learners to a chord chart on laurenbatement.com.
Chapters
Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. In this lesson we're going to be going over a very simple two chord song by the Beatles called Eleanor Rigby. Let's get into the lesson.
Now this Eleanor Rigby guitar lesson is for beginners. So we're only going to be using two chords, an E minor chord and a C chord. Now if you go listen to the album, there might be a couple other variations, but the goal of this lesson is to keep it simple and make it accessible for beginners. So the way way I would recommend making the E minor chord is with the first and second fingers. Because this creates a pivot point between the E minor and the C chord. You don't even have to lift up your second finger to get to that C chord. And if you're one of my guitar students and you know the two fingered chords to go from E minor to C, the easy C chord, you only have to move your first finger. So it makes playing this song super simple for beginners. So again, if you're doing the third full C chord, three fingers, leave the second finger down, pivot to C major. And if you're using the two finger chords, E minor to C is just simply moving that first finger back and forth. Now if you guys need a chord chart to follow along to, you can go to laurenbatement.com I'll put a link in the description below. And what I'm going to do first is talk about the guitar strumming patterns we're going to use for Eleanor Rigby. And I'm going to give you two of them in this lesson. The first one is the simplest. It's going to be four down strums for each chord. Okay, so let's just start with the C chord here because that's how our intro starts. And if I have a C chord, it's just going to be four downs. One, two, three, four.
Okay. Every time you see a chord on that chart, you're just going to play four down.
1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four.
1, 2, 3,4.
1, 2, 3, Four.
Okay. That's the simplest way to do it if you're a beginner. If you feel like your chord changes are fast enough, we can do what is called an eighth note rhythm. That means we're going to be doing eight down strums. It'll sound like this. It's going to be counted one and two and three and four and all downs. It'll sound like this. One and two and three and four and one and two and three and Four.
And.
Now you'll probably hear in that strumming pattern. It's very dark. And what I'm doing, if you guys are hearing that, that's a good thing. That means your ear is getting better. It's so dark because I'm not really strumming the entire chord. Kind of just getting the top three notes of the chord. So for the E minor, really focusing on the top three strings. And for the C chord, I'm focusing on the fifth, fourth, and third strings. You're not hearing those bright tones. Listen again.
Hear how dark it is versus this.
Now I point this out because this is a great dynamic that even as a beginner. Beginner you can use in this song. So I'm gonna go and do a little bit of a playthrough for you guys so that you can hear it. But what I would recommend is for the parts where it gets.
Ah, look at all the lonely people.
That you use more of those brighter tones versus the verse. So let me show you here in a little bit of a play along so that you guys can work on playing this song with me. Hey, guys, hope you're enjoying this lesson so far. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and and turn on the notifications. This way you'll know when I release more videos just like this one. All right, so I'm going to do a little bit of a playthrough. I'm going to do the intro, a verse, a chorus. I don't know, maybe I'll do the whole song. We'll see. All right, so I'm going to count this in. And for the intro, I'm going to do four strums per chord. And then when I move to the verse, I'm going to move to the eighth note strumming pattern. All right?
1, 2, 3, 4. I look at all the lonely people.
Among all the lonely people all right.
I'm gonna switch on the verse. Here we go.
Ellen A. Rigby Picks up the rice in the church where her wedding has been.
Lives in a dream Waits at the window in the face that she keeps by the door.
Who is it for? All the lonely people where do they all come? Come.
All the lonely people where do they all belong?
Another verse.
Father Mackenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear.
No.
One comes near look at him working Donning his socks in the night when there's nobody there.
What does he care? All alone Lonely people where do they all come from?
All the lonely people where do they all belong? Ready I look at all the lonely people.
I let all the lonely people.
So hopefully you guys heard those dynamics of me sometimes playing loud, playing soft, using the dark higher strings, using the brighter lower strings. So play around with that in your playing. Really hope you guys enjoyed this lesson. Make sure to give me a thumbs up. YouTube's gonna pop over a couple more videos over there. Go check those out. And I hope to see you guys in another lesson video real soon.
