A Horse With No Name by America Tutorial/Lesson
A Horse With No Name
Em, D6add9/F#, Emadd9
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Video transcript
hey everyone my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play A Horse With No Name by America on my journey instruments of 422 guitar this actually one of the coolest guitars I have because it is collapsible you can fold it in half and take it with you it's a great travel guitar so if you're interested in more information about it I'll make sure to leave that link in the description box below here's a quick overview of everything I'll be covering in this tutorial today and with that being said let's go ahead and get started all right guys so you only need to know three different chord shapes to play through this song and really it's only two so let me go ahead and show them to you the first is our E minor which looks like this and sounds like this and by the way if you don't know how to read these chord charts you're seeing on screen I Do cover how to do that in my free beginner Series right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out the next chord is our D6 add9 over fshp and all you want to do is take your two fingers and move your index finger up a string and your middle finger down a string all right and those are the only two chords you need to know to play this song this third one is kind of optional so this third one is called our E minor ad n chord and it's going to look like this and sound like this super beautiful um but the reason I say this is optional is because throughout the the song if you can't play this or this is an uncomfortable stretch for you you can actually play the E minor and our D6 ad9 over FP but if you want to add that E minor add nine in there it does kind of make the whole song sound a little bit more eerie and kind of brings it together so totally optional but those are the three chords to play through this song so go ahead and pause the video and take a little bit of time to memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them because it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier now this is one of the easier songs to do with chord shapes because there's really only two if you want to do the optional third one there's three um all of them are two finger cords so hopefully it shouldn't take you too long to get these memorized and under your belt but once you can transition between them smoothly then we can move on to the strumming that I would suggest for this song all right guys so as I always say if you are a beginner at guitar or you're somebody who struggles with playing and singing at the same time the first thing I would suggest you do is to bring up the song and go ahead and play through the entire thing with a single down strum on each chord change as you sing through the song and just take this time to really get used to what word you're singing whenever those chords are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look like you see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name it felt good to be out of the rain all right that's just a quick example but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song and just really make sure you know what word you're singing when those chords are changing and this actually something you do right now if you check out my patreon page I do have this entire guide available to download and print out so I'll make sure leave that link in the description box for you but once you've done that we can talk about more of a full strumming pattern that you can apply for this song all right guys so let's go ahead and break down the strumming pattern that you can use to apply for the entire song um those of you familiar with my channel this might look a little different because today we're going to be counting in a triplet Rhythm which is something that we don't cover very much on my channel so if you're not familiar with triplets we're basically assigning three counts to each beat so we have one Anda 2 and a three Anda four Anda for our measure okay now on screen I do have two measures listed and that's because for this entire song you're going to be switching back and forth between two chords and one is always going to be one measure on the left and the other is going to be one measure on the right so that's why this looks a little more convoluted we do have two measures to cover here so the full pattern counting it through on our left half or first measure we have one and a two and a three and a four and a okay down down up then to finish it out on the second measure we have a similar pattern we have one and a two and a three and a four and a down up down up all right so all together if we string it along with both measures it would look like this we have one and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two and a three and a four and a down up down down up down up down up up down up all right so even though the chords for this song can be pretty beginner friendly I think the bigger struggle would definitely be counting this Rhythm and getting it right um so basically if you need more time go ahead and pause and just really make sure you understand how to count this but essentially what we want to do is we're going to switch chords in the middle because those are two different measures so let's go ahead and start with the intro we have our E minor chord down what you're going to do is you're going to play your E minor for the left half or the first measure so we have one and a two and a three and a four and a all right down down up down down up super simple then we're going to move on to our next chord and we're going to finish it off with the second measure or the one on the right down up down up up down up one and a two and the three and a four and okay so if you speed it up a little bit you can hear how it kind of has that swingy kind of feel that the original song has so we have down down up down up down up up down up down down on switch E minor D over f all right so again if adding in those chords was a little more tricky go ahead and pause and just practice that really slowly on your own once you have the general feel of the downs and up strums what you want to do is slowly speed that up so that we can get it at Tempo so at Tempo it'll sound more like this one 2 ready go down down up down down up down up up down up all right so like I said if you're a beginner this Rhythm can be pretty tricky to get right so pause as much as you need to and practice as much as you need to but that is what it would sound like at full Tempo so if you are a beginner you can actually just apply this strumming pattern as is here for the entire song here's an example of the verse on the first part of the journe I was looking at all the light there were plants and birds and L all right and like I said you could apply this to the chorus as well you see a out of the rain in the desert you can remember your name okay and then you would just keep going um so if the struming pattern as written is already tricky enough go ahead and pause and you can use this to play through the entire song however if you do want to make it sound a little bit more like the original recording and you want to add a cool technique in there I am going to be showing you that next so let's go ahead and talk about how we can dress this up a little hey really quick in addition to the printable guide we've been looking at did you know I also offer customizable backing tracks polls for What songs you want to learn next and even video chats if you're having trouble you can unlock all these perks and more if you become a patron which helps me grow my channel and make more videos just like this one or if patreon's not your thing you can still help me out a lot by giving me a thumbs up and leaving a comment below to help me reach more people in YouTube's recommendations it only takes a second but makes a huge difference so thanks so much and let's get back into it all right guys so once you have the general strumming Rhythm down what we can do now is add a little bit of a percussive factor into our strum and how we're going to do that is we're going to take the pick that's in our right hand and as you strum down so let's put our E minor chord as you strum down on the strings you want to kind of angle your Pi so that it's at this angle and you're going to rake your strings across but while you're doing that you're also going to take the side of your hand here and you're just going to kind of place that on the strings to mute them so they don't ring out so super similar to palm muting but what's going to be different here is we're going to only do it for one bead at a time and you're going to kind of do them at the same time so as you rake down on the strings you also want to kind of Slide the side of your palm down with the strings to kind of have this percussive chucking sound all right so you shouldn't be able to hear the chord anymore after you apply this it should just sound kind of like raging strings okay so once you can get that technique down you can actually strategically add it into the strumming pattern to make it sound a little more like the original and give it a little bit more Rhythm so this is really a place where you can experiment and add this kind of raking Chuck into wherever you think sounds the best what I like to do is in the verses I'm going to go ahead and change some of these arrows to an X and that's where I like to kind of use this kind of chucking motion okay so in the verses I have down Chuck up down Chuck up and then I switch chords Down up Chuck up up down up all right this is just what I think sounded pretty close to the original song um but as they play through the song it does change a lot so if you wanted to listen to the original and try to you know mimic the way they do it you could do that but this is just how I like to play through my cover so in the verses I go down Chuck up down up Chuck up up down up and the first part of the journey I was looking at all the light there were PLS and birds and rocks all right um for the chorus here's another example of where I like to change around where I do the chucking motion so for the choruses I'm going to replace the X's with different arrows now um basically this is how I like to do the choruses so you can see here we're starting with no chucking down up down down up then on my second measure I like to switch to a chuck up Chuck up up down up all right see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name felt good to be out of the rain in the desert you can't remember your name cuz there ain't no one to give you no pain all right so like I said it's totally a really great idea to you know place these Chucks strategically throughout this strumming pattern in a way that you think sounds good or feels natural for you um but those are just two examples of ways that I like to play through this song but please feel free to take it and make it your own um but basically if you apply this kind of of chucking raking muted kind of percussive sound into your strumming Rhythm it can really just dress up the song and make it sound a lot more like the original all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get this strumming Rhythm under your belt it is a little more tricky because triplet rhythms are not super common in a lot of the songs that I teach here on my channel um but once you get the count of it and you kind of get the feel it should be a little bit easier for you again if you are a beginner you can play it plain old Jane just like it's written or you can also experiment with adding in those percussive Chucks throughout the strumming pattern and you know figure out a creative way that you like to play that um but once you have all of that figured out we can come back and put everything we've learned together to play through the song one two ready go on the first part of your journey I was looking at all the light there were PL of bir want to have fun playing through the rest of this song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page where you can unlock access to this as well as all my other FastTrack and playalong guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave that link in the description box down below if you enjoyed learning this song with me then you should definitely check out this video not only did have a super similar Vibe and feel but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye