Amazing Grace by N/A Tutorial/Lesson
Amazing Grace
G, G7, C, D, Em
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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 amazing grace on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something you want to learn make sure to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on another new tutorial and follow me on instagram for your chance to win a free lesson with me i once was lost so this song is going to be really great if you're a beginner there's only five chords and one of them is kind of optional you don't really have to play it and as far as the key goes since it's kind of a church hymn song you can kind of choose whatever key suits your voice the best so for this tutorial i will have my capo on the fourth fret because that suits my singing voice but um you could obviously do this whole tutorial through without a capo or you could move the capo to whatever fret suits your voice on top of that i did want to show you three different ways that i think sounds really good to play this song and it's going to go from easiest to hardest so make sure to look up here at the time guide to kind of figure out what level you're at uh strumming pattern one is going to be easiest strumming type pattern two it's gonna be a little bit harder and then the picking pattern is going to be the hardest way to play this but um none of them are actually that hard so let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial and i'll start with the chord all right so let's go ahead and take a closer look at the chords the first chord you need to know is g which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our g7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this now i know this hand position can be a little bit challenging and um kind of weird for beginners so this is our optional chord if you're having trouble playing this or anything like that you can always replace the g7 chord with your regular g for the entirety of this tutorial so just know that that's an option if you don't want to play g7 you can always just play a regular g okay after that we've got our c chord which looks like this and sounds like this next we have our d chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is our e minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right and those are all the chords you need to know for this song all right so after you have those chords memorized go ahead and take a few moments to practice transitioning between them i do have a video right here on how to transition between chords faster if that's something you're struggling with but um after you have those transitions down then we can move on to some of the strumming patterns that you can use with this song so let's go ahead and jump into strumming pattern one all right so this first drumming pattern is by far going to be the easiest way to play this song as you can see it's just one simple down strum and we're going to just play this one symbol down strum at the beginning of every measure for the entire song so let me go ahead and go through an example of what this would sound like if you put your g chord on that's the very first chord in the song and all you're going to do is do one down strum on each of these chords so we've got g then we have g7 if you want to play it then we have c and then g again and basically you just want to go through the entire song and play the one down strum strumming pattern to kind of get used to where those transitions are going to be and again if you're a beginner at guitar this is a great way to kind of get into the guitar and to accompany yourself without making it too hard so let me actually go ahead and go through the entire refrain part of this song with you so you can hear what it sounds like amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me i once was lost but now all right so you can see it's super simple and basically you could play that one down strum showing pattern for the entire song i think it would sound really great however if you are a little bit more adventurous and want to figure out another showing pattern that you can use with this song that's when we can introduce strumming pattern two so as you can see it's a little bit more detailed than strumming pattern one we've got down down up down up and what we're gonna do is play through this strumming pattern one time for each measure so let's go ahead and go through the motions i have my g chord down since again that's the first chord in the song and let's just practice these motions okay we've got down up down up that's the whole thing and then you're just going to repeat it over and over down down up down up down down up awesome so super simple right it is going to be a way to dress up the a little bit more from the first strumming pattern but now let's go ahead and put those chord transitions back on screen and practice transitioning so we've got our g chord on down down up down up then you switch your g7 if you want down down up down up then c down down up down up back to g all right so let's practice that one more time without stopping one two three one two three g down up down up g7 down up down up c down up down up g awesome so again you can kind of hear that rhythm forming and what we want to do is apply this through the entire song all right so now let me just play through the entire refrain one time for you guys and just know that this strumming pattern could be applied for the entire song for each of those verses okay but uh let's just go through the main verse here amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me i once was lost nice so again you could use that for the entire song for each of those verses um but that is kind of the intermediate way to play this song however i do have one other thing i want to show you which is a picking pattern that i think sounds really pretty with this song so if that's something that you're interested in learning let's stay tuned for the picking pattern next i once was lost all right so i've zoomed in a little bit to show you guys this picking pattern if you're unfamiliar with any of my other tutorials i do like to refer to these strings as numbers so let me just zoom in really quick and show you how i refer to these numbers with the low e string being six and it goes all the way up five four three two one to the high e string which is one okay so um for this little picking section i will be referring to each of these string names as numbers all right so this is a really pretty pattern that you can use but it's actually not that hard to learn so let's go ahead and just get started with our g chord since that's the first chord in the song what i want you to do is um with your picking hand your right hand your thumb is going to always um pick the bottom base note which is either going to be your sixth e string your fifth a string or your fourth d string okay so your thumb is going to be in charge of these three strings put your pointer finger on the third g string your middle finger on the second b string and your ring finger on the top e string or the high e string okay so now your thumb is going to be taking care of those three uh strings and then your pointer middle and ring are going to be taking care of the higher strings okay all right so i'm just going to take you through each of these chords and how we're going to play it so starting with our g chord what you want to do is take your thumb and pick the sixth bottom string and then we're going to pick three two one two three so if you think about it we're kind of going from the bottom note to the top note and then back down to the bottom note okay so we've got six three two one two three again six three two one two three all right and the rest of the chords are going to follow a very similar pattern let's go ahead and go to our g7 chord next uh this is going to be played exactly like g so we have six three two one two three one more time all right then we've got our c chord now your thumb's gonna move to the fifth string but the rest of this pattern is the same so again we've got five three two one two three one more time all right nice uh then our next chord is going to be our d chord for that your thumb's going to move to the fourth string because that's the bottom uh string in this chord and the rest of the pattern is the same so we've got four three two one two three one more time awesome and then the very last chord you need to do is your e minor chord and again for this one it's going to be like g where our thumb goes back to the sixth string but again the rest of the pattern is the same so for this one we've got six three two one two three one more time six three two one two three and i get this question a lot um since we are holding down the fifth and fourth string on our left hand you totally could play this e minor chord without any fingers on the guitar it would sound exactly the same all right but the advice i have is if you're new to guitar i always want to keep that chord shape down on your left hand just in case you accidentally you know pick a different string than you were meaning to it'll still sound good because you know all of the notes are part of that chord okay so anyways that is how you do the picking for each of these chords and so all you want to do now is put it together without stopping so let's go ahead and go through the first line we've got our g chord on six three two one two three then go to g seven six three two one two three then we've got c five three two one two three back to g six three two one two three stay on g twice then you go to d four three two one two three twice g g seven c five three two one two three back to g six three two one two three here's that e minor chord six three two one two three back to d four three two one two three back to g one more time six three two one two three twice nice and that is how you play basically the entire song because it works for every single verse in the song then once you have that down you just want to practice it a little bit faster and without stopping so let me go ahead and do that for you guys and you guys should follow along if you can we're starting with our g chord six three two one two three g seven five three two one two three back to g stay on g twice switch to d four three two one two three g again g7 c back to g e minor d g awesome so you played through basically the entire song just now so now i'm just going to speed it up a little bit more and put some singing with it so you guys can hear what it sounds like in context with the song and again i'm just going to be doing that main chorus section but just know that this whole picking pattern can apply for the entire song that saved a wretch like me i once was lost all right awesome and that's how you do the picking version of this song again this is kind of the most difficult way i think to play this song so if this is hard for you then make sure to stick to the strumming patterns that i showed you but that is three different ways of how you can play this song i once was lost all right so that was my tutorial for amazing grace i really hope that you liked it if you did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on any new tutorials here are my social media sites in case you'd like to follow me on any of those that's just where i do fun things like behind the scenes looks of things coming up i'll pull you guys on things you want to see i also do a monthly lesson giveaway on my instagram so make sure to follow me on there and one last little plug if you like the shirt i was wearing in today's tutorial this is my okabo shirt you can find this along with lots of other designs in my merch store link down below as well as under this video every purchase there really helps my channel to grow and allows me to continue making these free tutorials for you guys so thank you so much for anyone who's ever supported me in that way and i think that concludes this video so thank you so much for watching and i will see you in the next one bye you