7 Years by Lukas Graham Tutorial/Lesson
7 Years
Em, G, C, D, B, B7
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Video transcript
hey my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play seven years by Lucas Graham on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn only once I was s years old so to play this song in the same key as the original then you're going to want to put your Capo on the third fret if you don't have a capo then you can play this whole song with the exact same chords and patterns and everything I'm about to teach you it'll just be a little bit lower than the original song and also this song is super easy to learn because there's only four chords you have to know to play the song and once you learn the order that they go in and the juming pattern it stays pretty much the same through the entire song so it's super easy to pick up on so let's go ahead and get started by learning those chords so there are only four chords you have to know to play through the song but um at the end I will also show you some optional chords you can use if you want to be a little bit more fancy but let's go ahead and go into the basic chords that you have to know the first one is E minor which looks like this and sounds like this all right after that we have our G chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our c chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is D which looks like this and sounds like this all right so those are the four chords you have to know to play the song but I'm also going to go ahead and show you guys two more other chords that you can learn if you want to be a little more fancy and dress up a particular part of the song and I will explain all of that later but let me go ahead and show you those two chords in case you want to challenge yourself and make things a little bit more interesting one of them is a bar chord which is B major which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last one is a B7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this but like I said if the B major and this B7 chord are too hard for you to play you don't need them to play through the song it's just something a little bit extra you can add in if you want to all right so once you have all those chords memorized how to play them and you're able to transition between them pretty smoothly then let's go ahead and move on to some strumming patterns be 30 years so the first drumming pattern is the one I always say to start with which is just one downstroke on the bead for each chord change and like I say in all my other videos this just helps you to get familiar with where you need to make those chord changes but this particular pattern is also used in the song itself so let's go ahead and get started with it so the first chord in the song is E minor you're going to want to go ahead and put that chord down so we're going to go ahead and just play through each of these chords once on a downstroke in rhythms so we have E minor G C C again D E minor G C C D and if you're having a little bit of trouble with the Rhythm just here's a tip you want to go ahead and count to four for each of those chords so we're going to have four beats in each chord so if you start with your E minor it goes was 1 2 3 4 then you switch to g 1 2 3 4 switch to c 1 2 3 4 and then here at the end we're going to split it up into two beats so we have C on 1 and 2 and then D on three and four so if you put that all together it sounds like this we have E minor 2 3 4 g 2 3 4 C b 2 3 4 c 2 D 4 I hope that makes sense but um once you get that rhythm in your head then it'll be a lot easier to play the strumming patterns that I'm going to show you but let's go ahead and go through an example of what the song sounds like when you have this one downstroke strumming pattern I was years old my mama told me go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely I was s years old and so go ahead and go through the rest of the song and play through it and just do the one downstroke chord changes that way you know where to expect them and stuff and then once you have that down we'll go ahead and move into the strumming pattern that I wanted to show you guys so I practiced through a couple of different strumming patterns for this song but I found that this one was the most basic and easiest strumming pattern to play so I'm going to go ahead and teach you the pattern so here's the whole pattern you can see it's down down up up down up so go ahead and put your E minor chord down since that's the first chord in the song and we're just going to practice through this pattern really slowly we have down down up up down up pretty simple right so once you get that pattern down all you want to do is start putting in those chord transitions that we practiced earlier so we have E minor G C and right here it changes a little bit because sometimes during the song you're going to repeat the C twice and then other times during the song you're going to do do that split rhythm with the c and the D chord so let me go ahead and show you both ways if you stay on the C chord it'll sound like this E minor G C twice and now sometimes in this song it's going to change a little bit so instead of playing C twice we're going to change up the last half of it so we're going to play through c one time down down up up down up and then on this next one instead of playing this same pattern again it's actually going to change to down down up and for each down down up we're going to play one chord so the first one gets C and the second one gets D so we have C down up D down up so try that with me again we've got C down up D down up and you're just going to want to tack this on to the back end of the strumming pattern that we were practicing earlier so the whole phrase goes like this we have E minor down up up down up G down up up down up C down up up down up C down up D down up so if you practiced that rhythm with me earlier where we split the C and the D in half then you're going to be able to play this struming pattern a little bit easier because you already know where those chord changes are and how it splits in Rhythm so let me go ahead and show you how it works out all together we've got E minor g c c d 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 and congratulations once you get that you pretty much can do the entire song it's going to be exactly that strumming pattern with exactly those chord transitions in that exact same order for pretty much the entire song and um it's really super easy to grasp on to once you get the basic concepts now if you want your cover to sound a little bit more like the original song There is one last thing you can do to add into this pattern to make it sound more like the original Seven Years by Lucas grim and that is we are going to add in another chord after our first E minor chord and where we're going to add this in is that last down up in the phrase so put your E minor chord on with me and we're going to play through it down down up up down up that's the pattern we just learned so if you want to make it a little more fancy go ahead and add that D on that last down and upstroke and now it'll sound like this down down up up down up so you can hear the the chord change we have E minor D down down up up down up so if you want to add that in the rest of it is just like we practice so we have E minor d g c c d now if adding in that D is a little bit hard and is messing up your Rhythm don't even worry about it just go ahead and stick with what we had been practicing earlier our E minor straight to G I know it can be a little bit difficult to add that D in so if it's messing up your Rhythm at all go ahead and just leave it out and play it through the way way we practiced it a little bit earlier personally I actually like the way it sounds when I don't add the D in but that is an option available to you guys who want to make it sound more like the original but for this little cover that I'm going to do to show you the whole song I'm going to go ahead and leave out the little extra D that we've been practicing but now let's go ahead and go through the entire song of seven years by Lucas gri using just these four chords good luck once I was years old M me go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely once I was years old it was a big big world we were big sh each other to the limits we were learning quick by 11 smoking her and drinking burning liquor never Rich so we would out to make that steady fig once I was 11 years old daddy told me get yourself a wife for you me once I was 11 years old I always have that dream like my daddy before so I started stories about the glory seem cuz only those I really love will ever really know once I was 20 years old story got told before the morning sun when life was many once I was 20 years I always seek my goals I don't believe in Failure cuz I know the smallest voic is they can make I got my I and if we don't I leave I hope to see you later once I was 20 years old story got told ring about all before me once I was 20 years old soon we'll be years old songs have been sold travel around the world and we're still rolling soon we'll be years old I'm still learning about life my woman my children fall me so I can sing them all my songs and I can tell the stories most of my boys I will some I still seeking glory and some I had to leave behind my brother I'm still sorry soon I'll be 60 years old daddy got 61 remember life and life will come better I man so happy iot the on I my children and busy once or twice a month soon I'll be 60 years old think the world is good have a lot of children looking for me soon I'll be 60 years old soon I'll be 60 years old think the world is colder have a lot of children you can warm me soon I be 60 years old I was s years old my mama told me go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely I was years old I years soon I'll be 60 years old think the world is good and like I said at the beginning if you want to venture out and play some of those B chords and make the guitar part a little bit more interesting then the place to add those in in your cover would be during the bridge where he says I'm still learning about life my wom brought children for me pretty much that part till the end is where you'll change so let me go ahead and play that part for you guys just so you know where to add in those B chords if you want to I'm still learning about my brought children for me so I can sing them all my songs I can tell them stories my boys are with some still seeking glory and some I had a brother Sor soon I'll be 60 years old daddy got 61 life and life a better one I made the man so I the letter on I hope my children come and visit once or twice a soon I'll be 60 years old think the world is C have a lot of children soon I'll be 60 years old soon I'll be 60 years old think the world is colder have a lot of children you War me soon I'll be 60 years and then the rest of the song is just the same as I played it in the other version so you can see the only place you want to add in those B chords is right here during the bridge if you want to make the guitar part a little bit different during that portion and um make your song a little bit more interesting okay so that wraps up my tutorial for 7 years by Lucas Graham sorry if it was a little bit convoluted I just learned this song this morning because so many of you guys requested did it so I really should have practiced it longer so my apologies but today was the only day I had available to make a new video for you guys so you guys know I had to take it and um again sorry about my voice and stuff too I have like super bad allergies lately I don't know if you can tell my voice sounds a little bit like lower and stuff so um yeah hopefully that didn't distract you too much from the lesson and um I hope that you were successful at playing it because if you stick with the basic Str patterns and the basic chords this is really kind of an easy song to play so I wish you all the best of luck in practicing it if you're still in the mood to play more songs then go ahead and check out some of my playlists the first playlist is my basic tutorials which are just like this one it's all strumming patterns and easy chords and um yeah those are just some songs that you can learn pretty fast and then if you want to check out my detail tutorials that is where I go into a little bit more detail and um those songs have a lot of like picking patterns and things like that that go a little a little bit more in depth into the song so you'll probably want to click on that if you thought this was super easy and want to challenge and then also my TMT tutorials are my 20-minute techniques where I just give you guys advice on just like techniques on the guitar like how to play your bar chords better and things like that so go ahead and check that out if you would like to and as well as follow me on any of my social media sites those are the fastest ways to get in contact with me if you have any questions about my tutorials or you have any requests on what you think I should do next uh go ahead and reach me there and um yeah thanks so much for watching my tutorial I really hope it helped you guys and I will see you in my next video bye once I was years old