American Pie by Don McLean Tutorial/Lesson
American Pie
G, D/F#, Em7, Am, C, Em, D, G6/B, A7, D7
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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 American Pie by Don McLean on the guitar I wanted to give a huge shout out to my patrons for voting on this song as this month's Patron picks so if you want a little bit of voting power in the songs that you see me Teach here on my channel then make sure to check that out I will link that in the description box below um so really quick here is an 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 we do have 10 different chord shapes to play through this song but don't worry they're all open and Fa easy so let's go ahead and start with our G major 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 and just another note about this G chord is I like to use the four-finger G but if you do like the three-finger G you could do that as as well um but the reason I prefer the four-finger G in this song is because it makes it easier to transition to our next chord which is our D over F sharp from there we have our E minor 7 then we have our a minor chord there's our c chord so our open E minor chord then there's our D chord next is our G6 over B chord we also have our A7 and then the last chord you need to know is our D7 and those are the 10 chords you need to know to play this song all right guys so really quick something special you can do with both the D chord and the D7 chord in this song is you can add little Frills to it that you kind of hear the piano doing in the song So basically from your D if you add your pinky right underneath your ring finger on the high e string on the third fret give there D suspended so you can go from D to D suspended take it back off to D then remove your middle finger and then put it back on so you can hear how it kind of mimics the piano there so that's one little frill you can do and you can do the same thing on your D7 chord as well what you can do here is you can add your pinky here on the high E string on the third fret and then you take it off and then you take off your ring finger and then put it back on okay so you can use both of those throughout the song um they're totally extra totally optional but I do think it sounds a lot more like the piano if you do it that way so I just kind of wanted to show you guys those options all right so I know there's quite a handful of chords to play this song but they're all fairly simple and very beginner friendly so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them because it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier and if transitioning between your cord shapes fast enough is something that you're currently struggling with I would suggest checking out my practice with me Series right here on YouTube where we go through that skill in real time together um but once you have that down we can go ahead and talk about the strumming you can use for this song So if you're a beginner at guitar or you struggle with singing and playing at the same time the first thing I would suggest doing is to pull up the song and go through the whole thing with a single single downum for every 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 the beginning and what that would look like long long time ago still okay it's a little low for me but anyways you would want to go ahead and do that for the entire song and just make sure you know where those chords are going to be transitioning and this 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 will make sure to leave that link in the description box for you guys but once you have the practice pattern down we can talk more about the full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so for this song you basically are going to be using two strumming patterns back and forth through the whole thing um but I'm going to go ahead and show them to you as two separate strumming patterns just so it makes more sense so this is the first one as you can see it's down down up and we're going to count this in a eighth note really rthm so basically it's going to count like this we have 1 2 and 3 4 and down down up all right super simple now really quick I'm going to add a vertical line halfway down the uh strumming pattern and this is just going to represent where we want to change chords so this strumming pattern is going to be used a lot as we kind of go through the song whenever we're changing chords a little more quickly so for example let's go ahead and look at the chorus we have G to C for bye-bye miss American Pi so here's an example of where you would want to split the strumming so for the first half we have our G down down up then you finish it out with your c chord down down up and then let's finish the line back to G down down up to D down up all right so basically the counting for this is going to be a full measure even though we're playing two chords within that measure so without stopping we have have down down up down down up down down up all right so the actual counting is super simple we just have to know when we're going to be changing those chords pretty quickly and if you are familiar with the song then you'll kind of be it'll be intuitive for you but the CH is a great example of where we're going to use this split strumming pattern um and then let's go ahead and just jump straight into the second strumming pattern you'll see that it's almost the same just a little bit different this is also going to be counted in an eighth note strumming pattern so for this one we have 1 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and four and down down up up down up all right so this one we're not going to be splitting chords you would play this full strumming pattern one time through for certain chords and um the reason this is kind of piggybacking off of the first strumming pattern is because you're going to be using both when you play through this song so let's go go ahead and look at verse two for an example of this um the first little part of this you're going to be using the full strumming pattern two for each of these chords so we have G down up up down up a minor C A minor D Minor D twice but here on this next line now do you believe in rock and roll we're going to have a little bit of a walk down so from the G to D over F Shar to E minor 7 and that's an example of where you're going to want to use strumming pattern one with that split pattern so for this part of it we would say G down down up do the split to D over F SHP down down up and then return back to strumming pattern two and give that E minor 7 a full measure down down up up down up all right so as a general rule of thumb you can use the split pattern strumming pattern one for the choruses and then for the verses you'll mostly be using the full strumming pattern for each chord so just as a quick example let's go over the beginning of verse two so you can see how that would sound you believe in rock and roll can music savior soul and how dance real slow all right so basically just be aware of wherever we're going to have this split pattern um it's just going to be occasionally throughout a lot of these verses and now really quick if you did want to do that decord frill that I taught you guys in the chord section of this tutorial let me go ahead and break down what that would look like with this full strumming pattern so on our D we would start it with down down then you would lift off your middle finger up up go ahead and put your middle finger back down down up then we're starting a new measure you'd put your pinky on just for the first beat down then take it off you're just doing a regular D down then take off your middle finger up up and then put your middle finger back down up all right I know that's super confusing I I will try my best to visualize it here on screen for you guys but basically that's how I would suggest doing that little frill in context of the strumming pattern so we have down up up down up down down up up down up all right but honestly if you just want to put that frill in there go with whatever you are feeling naturally as you play I'm sure it'll sound fine you just want to make sure to lift your middle finger first and then put your pinky on all right Dance all right and like I said just go with what you're feeling I think it'll sound really great if you want to add that in there but basically that is how you could use the strumming and you could apply that for the entire song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this strumming pattern under your belt the more you can play it and internalize that Rhythm without counting it in your head the easier it'll be to put singing on top of it so go ahead and just take as much time as you need to get that down but once you have this strumming pattern down and you have those chords memorize and you can transition between it we can put everything together to play through the song a long long time ago iile and I knew if I had my chance that I could make make those people dance me they be happy for a while Want to Have Fun jamming out to the rest of the song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page we can unlock access to this as well as all my other FasTrack and playalong guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a 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 does it have a super similar Vibe and feel but it's just as fun and easy to play so I will see you over there bye