A Place in This World
C, G, D, Em, Am, F
Are you new to playing the guitar? Watch my free Beginner Series where I show you all of the basics. You'll be playing your first songs in minutes!
Video transcript
hey everyone my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play a place in this world by Taylor Swift on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn so today we're gonna take it back old school and do one of Taylor Swift's very first songs from her first album and that's gonna be great for all of you beginners out there because there's only six chords for the entire song and only one real strumming pattern that you need to know for the entire thing so it's going to be really great for beginners you'll need a capo on your second fret if you want to sing it in the same key as Taylor Swift's original version if you don't have a capo you can play this whole tutorial through without one it'll just be a whole step lower so you'll have to sing it lower than she did in her cover so let's go ahead and jump into what those chords look like all right so let's go ahead and take a closer look at the six chords you need to know we're gonna start off with C which looks like this and sounds like this all right after that we have G which looks like this and sounds like this next we have our D chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have E minor which looks like this and sounds like this and now we have a miner which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is f which looks like this and sounds like this now if you're still brand-new to guitar and bar chords are a little hard for you there is an alternate fingering you can play which looks like this and sounds like this I will just give you a warning though if you do this alternate fingering of F make sure not to strum this top E or this bottom east string otherwise it will change the chord up a little bit all right so once you have all six of those chords memorized and you can transition between them pretty easily let's go ahead and move on to the strumming pattern that you'll want to use for this song now if you've watched any of my other tutorials before you'll know that I always suggest starting out the same way what you're gonna do is go through the entire song and you're just gonna play each chord once on a Down stroke just so you know where those chord transitions are gonna be happening like which word you'll be singing and stuff like that now I usually call this a practice pattern but in this song you do use this one down strum pattern a few times so I'm gonna go ahead and call this strumming pattern one let's go ahead and start from the top and go through what this would sound like if you put your C chord on that's the first chord in the song and you're just gonna strum it down once I don't know what I want so don't I'm still figure it no it's down this road I'm just walking trying to see and so you'll see here I've highlighted all the words we're gonna be doing our chord changes on you'll want to go ahead and take that through the rest of the song just so you know where those chord transitions are gonna be where to expect them what word you'll be singing when you're gonna be doing those and so by doing that you'll familiarize yourself with the song a little bit more alright and then once you have that down we're gonna go ahead and jump into the second pattern which is the most-used pattern in this song so here's pattern 2 as you can see it's just down down up up down up very simple you're going to want to play that through for each chord so let me go ahead and show you the pattern we've got down down up up down up one more time that's down down up up down up so what you're going to want to do is take this pattern and apply it for each chord so if you go ahead and start again at the beginning of the song with our C chord when I strum that went down once and then right here is when we're gonna start strumming pattern two so we have our G chord on we've got alright and from there you just want to apply that for all the other cords so we've got J so you see it's a very simplistic pattern once you get the hang of the rhythm you can actually apply this pattern for the entire song if you want to but I'm going to go ahead and start from the beginning and just show you what this sounds like with the verses I don't know what I want and just for an additional example let's go ahead and take this pattern through for the chorus you're gonna want to put your email cord on that's the first chord in the chorus and we're just gonna apply this same pattern and you'll see at the end of the course there I like to go back to strumming pattern one where you just strum down once it just kind of closes the chorus and makes it a little bit softer before you go back into the first and that's strumming pattern to for you super simple right again like I said you can play this for the entire song if you want to but I am going to show you guys one more strumming pattern so this will be strumming pattern three and as you can see it's just five down strokes and I only use this a couple of times during the song usually towards the end of the first right before it goes into the chorus it kind of builds up suspense and leads into the chorus really nicely so let me go ahead and show you an example of that I'm going to start at the end of verse one even though so you can hear how that goes on the word do on your D chord I'm just doing instead of strumming pattern to continuing it I'm just strumming down five times what okay so go ahead and practice that with me at the end of that first there we're going to start on our E minor chord and we're gonna do strumming pattern two throughout and then when we get to that last D chord we're gonna do our five down strum pattern three okay so we've got okay again with singing even though all right and again I use that at the end of the verses before I go into the chorus that's strumming pattern three for you again it's optional if you don't want to use that and you just want to do strumming pattern two through the whole song or even strumming pattern one through the whole song if you're really brand new to guitar that's totally fine it'll sound great and that's all you need to know for the entire song you've learned all six chords you know all of the different variations of strumming patterns if you want to use them of course like I always say you can choose which pattern you like the best in my cover here at the end I will show you guys up here which strumming pattern in particular I'm using for which part of the song and I'll also list all of the lyrics and chords and everything in front of you so once you're ready for let's go ahead and put those elements together and play the entire song of a place in this world by Taylor Swift good luck baby I don't know what I want maybe I'm just all right so that was my tutorial for a place in this world by the one and only Taylor Swift those of you who followed me for a long time know that I've been quoting of line from this song for forever on my Twitter and on my Instagram and everything I'm just a girl trying to find a place in this world because that speaks to me because that is so me so I finally decided if I'm gonna quote this line so much I might as well do the tutorial for this song so I hope that you guys liked it it's super beginner friendly and it's so fun to play through once you get it so I hope that I was able to help you if I did please leave a thumbs up for me down below as well as subscribe to my channel so that you know every time I post a new tutorial also feel free to leave your comments in the comment section below about what songs or requests you have in the future I do look at those and I usually look at the ones that have the most thumbs up and I'll try my best to do those videos for you so just a little heads up for you guys and also feel free to follow me on any of my social media sites if you guys want to get in touch with me on more of a daily basis on Twitter is where I do lots of polls so definitely follow me there if you want to have your opinion voiced about which songs you want to see next and Instagram is just a place where I like to post my own personal pictures as well as kind of mini covers that sneak peek at what I'm working on for you guys and then of course Facebook I don't check it as often but that is somewhere where you guys can keep in touch with me as well so thanks again for watching this tutorial I really hope that it helped you and I will see in my next video by