Wild Horses Guitar Lesson - How To Tutorial

Wow.

Hey, everybody, welcome back. Lauren Bateman here. And we're doing a phenomenal song that I love. I used to love performing this song called Wild Horses. When I perform, I would usually put a capo on the first fret to make it a little bit higher for my voice. But we'll do it in the original key, so bear with me in my singing here. So this is more of an intermediate song. There's some cool little timing things going on. We do have a B minor chord. We do have an F major chord that we're gonna have to contend with. So I would recommend, if you're gonna try this song, that you feel pretty flat, fluid with your bar chords, your B minor and your F major bar chords. Especially since we're not capoing, it's going to be really hard to get all those strings to ring on that F bar chord. So if you're coming into this and you're like, hey, I'm feeling good about my strumming or looking to push my strumming a little bit, that's cool. And you can go on my website, you can see the easier version of the B minor and the F. But I would recommend having a little bit of a grasp of your barre chords to attempt this one because it is a little more in the intermediate realm. So go to my website, laurenbateman.com you can go get the chord chart for this Rolling Stone song. And then this way you can follow along with me as I go through. So if we take a look at the verse and if you scan down to the chorus, you're going to see that there's some chords in brackets and you'll see that there's three chords and then one, and then the bracket ends. So basically those chords are going to have three beats. So the C chord is going to have three beats. 1, 2, 3. And the D chord in this verse here I'm using, the first example is only going to have one beat. So we're going to be on that chord really quick and off that chord onto the next chord. So those are the kind of timing things to be aware of. Now, the strumming pattern for this is a very laid back strumming pattern. When I perform live, I'm going to show you the actual strumming pattern that I think they're using on the song. I kind of play a little bit more of a relaxed pattern. And that's the great thing about covering a song is you can play it whatever way you want to. I'm going to show you Kind of the way they're doing it. And it's a very laid back. It almost has.

Shuffle feel to it. Almost like a blue shuffle feel. No, it doesn't sound like a blue shuffle, but it has a very relaxed feel to it. You'll hear it when I play it. So I'm going to briefly play you.

What this strumming pattern is for the intro. So we have.

Feel it like kind of like swings.

So it's not very. It's not, you know, it's not sitting straight on the downbeat. There is a swing to it. So it's not.

That would be very on the beat.

1, 1, 2, 3.

And see how that's very stiff. We, we don't want to be stiff with this strumming pattern. We want to be relaxed. We want to swing.

So those ups, the up before the three and the up before the. And if you're looking at the strumming pattern here, they're very quick, very fast. They're just these quick little 16th notes. But it's a swing feel. We're swinging this rhythm so it's 1.

2, a 3 and E and A.

That's the rhythm.

1, 2, a 3 and e and A. Down, down, up, down, down, up, down, up.

And sometimes people, you know, they have troubles with these rhythms. And I tell them, clap it. Try.

Because if you can clap it, you have a better chance of being able to put it onto the guitar. So let's try clapping again. So we got 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, a 3 and E and a 1, 2, a 3 and e. And a 1, 2, a 3 &e and a. 1, 2, a 3 ande.

And so that is the clapping rhythm. Now we're gonna put it on the guitar. So I get my B minor chord here.

And down, down, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up, down, up.

I'll slow that down a little bit for you guys.

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

Almost sounds like I'm singing Horse with no Name a little bit in the.

First part of the story has that.

Kind of feel to it. So back to Wild Horses. So we've got this verse part here in the intro. You can use the same for the intro.

It's just G, A minor.

G.

A min.

And at the very end of the intro we have a split chord. So intro we have G, A minor G and then A minor G splitting a measure and then same thing in the verse. Here we have B minor, G, B minor, G. And then we have A minor. And those are all full measures doing the strumming pattern. And then when we get to after the A minor, you're going to see three Cs in a D shoved into a bracket. And that's a measure.

So that's going to be down, down, up, down, down.

So that is going to be the C. The C is going to get the first half of our strumming pattern.

Down, down, up, down, down.

And then the up, down, up goes to the D chord.

Down, down, up, down, down, up, down, up. So you see that down, down, up, down, down, up, down, up.

And that's how we're going to transition into that G chord.

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

And then we're right back into the pattern. So that's how we're going to transition through those parts for the verse. So let's go through. I'm just going to play the first half of the verse, starting on our B minor with the strumming pattern. So we've got up, down, down, up.

Down, down, up, down.

That's our strumming pattern.

All right.

So we got 2, 3, 4.

Easy to do.

And then right back into B minor. I actually played something a little bit different. And this is the hard thing about singing and playing at the same time. My hand really just does what it wants to do. Let me go back to that A minor and play it the way I said I was going to play it.

So A minor, we have down, down, up, down, down, up, down, up.

Down, up, down.

And then back to B minor. So that's the way it should be playing. I don't even know what I did. If you want me to find out what I did.

I see what I did. So there's another way, another option. I don't think they might do this sometimes, but not all the time. Basically what I did is I started the strumming pattern the same and I did down, down on C, down, down on D. So.

So that's all I did. So I did the down, the three and I did that as the C. And then I did four and on the. The very last chord. So that's another option. And I think that also works well. And I think we probably end up doing that in the chorus a little bit. And that's maybe why I'm jumping to it. So that is some of the variations that you can use in the verse. It just goes to show you when you get to a level where you're trying to sing and play the guitar at the same time, you stop thinking about what you're doing on the strumming pattern and your hand just goes with it. Which often happens to me, which is sometimes when you're watching these videos, I might sometimes play a different strumming pattern. And it's just because my. My brain is concentrating on the lyrics versus the guitar. So there you go. So let's. I'll play the second part of that verse just so you guys can hear it.

Grace El.

No one let you.

And then I'm going into the chorus. So there. I did them both ways. I actually like that way of getting into the chorus better. So you can play around with both ways, choose the way you like because it's your version of the song. And that's the great thing about covering songs. So now we're going to jump into the chorus and once we do that. So this song is just. It's repetitive. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus. There's not really a lot of variety, which is great. So once we do a verse in chorus, we've done the entire song, which is great. So, chorus. Now we're going to start with A minor and then again you're going to see three Cs and a D in a bracket. And then interestingly after that we have two chords splitting a measure, the G and the F. And then we have again another bracket. So there's gonna be a lot of chord changes very quickly in this chorus, which also makes it more intermediate. So I'm gonna play through the wild forces again and we're gonna pretty much maintain the strumming pattern. And again you can do whichever of the split chords you wanted to from the verse. So on that triple C D, you can either do the two downs or keep the strumming pattern. Whatever comes naturally to you, apply that. The G and the F. The split measure. I would recommend doing down, down, up, down, up. Something like that makes it a little bit easier. So let me go through the first line of the chorus just so we can go through it so you can hear it. And then I'll come back and explain a little bit more. So we got A minor, same strumming pattern.

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

So you heard again, just to give you guys some variety. So the A minor, I kept the regular strumming pattern. And then the triple C D I also kept the regular strumming pattern. The G and the F I did 1, 2, and up the F. I repeated it 3, 4, and up.

So it's down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up.

And then the second part, I did my other way with the two downs.

On the C and the dude dragged me away.

And then we go right back into the verse. So there you go. Those are the strumming patterns for the chorus. Again, not much different than what we're doing in the verses. We're just changing up the chords a little bit. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back to the verse, play it through just so you guys can hear it. And from the intro, just so you guys can hear it through. Don't quote me on the strumming patterns because I might improvise. Remember, I do a lot of improvising in my rhythm guitar playing. And I'm sure a lot of your favorite artists do that too. I remember I was watching just a little aside here I was watching Nancy Wilson and she was talking about the intro to Crazy on youn. And she was talking about, you know, it's this really crazy intro and it's really cool. Lots of cool stuff. Pinch harmonics and everything. And even she said she's like, I never play it the same way twice. So just to go show you, even the own artists don't play their music the same way all the time. So let's start off with our intro.

Child to live in.

It's easy to do.

Things you wanted.

I'll let me.

You.

Gracious lady.

You know I am.

No, I can.

And there you have it. So it basically just keeps repeating that over and over and over again. Very, very simple. Simple for an intermediate song. And that's it. Just keep practicing it. Take a section at a time, practice those different strumming patterns, and then put them all together so that you can play through the beginning and the end. Another thing that you can do with this song is dynamics. Dynamics is always. Especially on this chorus, you can really dig in. You know, you come out of this first chorus and you got, you know.

I watched you suffer.

How far I bring the guitar down. So we went for something that was really loud and big. It makes it more intimate and it gives a lot more dynamic space. So these verses can be quiet. And also, when you're listening to the recording, don't get confused. There's a couple guitars, so there's another guitar, you know, doing some like pinch harmonic type stuff. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about the harmonic things that you're hearing. That's someone else on a different guitar. We're focusing on the strumming. So what I would focus on this if you're feeling really, really interested. Is that, is that dynamics? You know, making these verses.

Childhood living.

You don't even have to strum.

See.

Things you wanted.

About them for you.

Now I know that's not how they play, but you can see how it adds a lot of interest to the song. So sometimes you don't always have to strum. Sometimes not. Strumming is better than strumming. So a little extra bonus rhythm lesson for you guys at the end of Wild Horses here. If you like this lesson, go to laurenbateman.com donate always love donations that I get from you guys. Or you can go to my website and buy my guitar course where I talk about different things like you know, more intermediate strumming, some finger picking stuff. I even have a bar chord course course in there. If you're looking to find ways to make your bar chords easier. I have a process for that. So check it out and practice hard and I'll see you guys in the next lesson video.