Auld Lang Syne
G, D, Em, C
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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 audible anxion AKA that one New Year song on the guitar so stay tuned to this is something that you'd like to learn and really quick before we jump into the tutorial I wanted to take a second to thank today's sponsor and your music I'll actually be featuring their next G smart guitar in this tutorial today so if you like what you see make sure to visit the link in my description box down below as well as in this icard right up here alright guys so I figured out a super beginner friendly way to play this song and I'm gonna teach it to you but I have four different ways that you can play it and they'll gradually get a little bit harder so we're going to go all the way from just simple strumming to a finger Style version as you just heard so make sure to stay tuned but first of all let's go ahead and talk about our guitar you will need it to be in standard tuning and I am not going to be using a capo today but because there's been so many Renditions of this song you could feel free to move your Capo wherever you want to match your voice um but I won't be using a capo in this tutorial today on top of that I only have four chord shapes to show you to play through the whole song and I'm going to show you two different ways to strum it which are the easier ways and then two different ways to finger pick it which get a little bit more hard so you can definitely feel free to pick whichever variation you're most excited to learn um but with all of that being said let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial and we'll start with the chords alright guys so like I said you only need to know four chords to play through this song and we're going to start with our G 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 and I will link that video right here for those of you who need it after that we have our D chord the next one is our E minor chord and then the last chord you need to know is C and those are the only four chords you need to know to play through the song All right so as I always say if you're new to guitar make sure to pause the video and just take a few minutes to memorize those chord shapes as well as transition back and forth between them it'll just make learning the rest of the song that much easier both that being said let's go ahead and jump into those strumming patterns alright so the first drawing pattern I have to show you is the very easiest way to play it which is just going to be with a single down strum for every chord change so all you want to do is sing through the song with the lyrics and do a single down strum every time you see those chords above that word so as an example it would sound like this to my mind for rounds and the days yet for the sake of all things all right and that's how you would play through the song with strumming pattern one so sorry about my singing that's actually not in a favorable key for me and I actually like to play this with finger picking but I'll show you that later um but that's the easiest way that you could learn to play this song if you're in a pinch and you want to play this for New Year's that's a really great way to go and it sounds very sentimental um however there is a slightly harder strumming pattern that you could use that kind of fills in some more of that space so let's go ahead and talk about strumming pattern too Alright guys so for this second strumming pattern as you can see it's not much harder we're just going to go down down up down down up and the whole thing is going to sound like this foreign and basically all you want to do is take this strumming pattern and play it one time through for each chord change but before we jump into that let's go ahead and talk about the Rhythm it's a very straightforward Rhythm we have one two and three four and one two and three four and down down up down down up all right so let's go ahead and try it with our G chord just to make sure we got the Rhythm down I'll count us in I'll do it for a few measures I just want you to jump in when you think you have it one two ready go down down up down down awesome so once you get that Rhythm down all you have to do is put those chord transitions in there and like I said we're playing this pattern through one time for each chord so you'd have G down down up all right let's go ahead and finish out the song you've got your G chord again back to d c and on G all right and it's that simple so you could apply the strumming pattern for the entire song and it would sound pretty great so let's go ahead and go through an example of what that would look like foreign all right so that's how the entire song would sound with strumming pattern two but as I said earlier the way that I like to play this song is actually with a beautiful finger picking pattern and also kind of like a finger style pattern where you can incorporate the melody into the guitar part so let's go ahead and zoom in so we can talk about these picking patterns speaking of picking I wanted to thank the other sponsor for today's video Black Mountain picks those of you who are familiar with my channel might know that I've been using these Black Mountain thumb picks for a while now and the reason I like them so much is because of this Innovative spring design that holds the Pick Part to the part that wraps around your thumb a lot more tightly and I've used other ones in the past where they slide around when you get sweaty or they lose grip over time and I have never had that problem with these Black Mountain picks they're the perfect solution for any time you're playing guitar and you want to go between picking and strumming with ease and so this is a perfect example of that in this tutorial I'm showing you picking and strumming and this thumb pick is perfect to transition between both of those on top of that he just launched his new light gauge line which is perfect for people like me who like to play with thin pigs of course he also has plenty of other gauges you can try out in a convenient trial pack so I'll make sure to link all of this down below so if you're interested in trying one of these Black Mountain thumb picks for yourself I'll make sure to have that link down below as well as in this icard right up here alright guys so I've zoomed in a little to take a closer look at this picking pattern but before we begin I do want to mention that I do like to number my string so the low E is 6 and it goes five four three two one all the way to the high e in my head it just makes more sense to number them whenever I'm teaching so hopefully it does in your head as well um but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into this picking pattern so what I want you to do is we're going to use our thumb to cover the base note in each chord and then we're going to use our pointer middle and ring finger to cover these bottom three strings g b e and now when we're playing through this your thumb is going to change strings based on the bass note that we're playing for that chord but these three fingers will always stay on these bottom three strings okay and so if we look at the pattern for each of these chords they're all going to follow the same pattern we'll start with our G chord what I want you to do is start with your bass note six on your thumb then you're going to take your pointer finger on three your middle finger onto go back to your pointer finger then your ring finger is going to cover that high e pointer middle pointer all right that's the whole pattern so if we're talking about fingers it would be thumb pointer middle pointer ring pointer middle pointer so if we're talking about it with numbers it would be six three two three one three two three so that's the whole pattern for G and like I said the other chords are going to follow suit so with our D chord all you want to do is move your thumb to that fourth D string since that's our bass note but the rest of the pattern is going to be the same so for D we have four three two three one three two three all right remember these finger patterns are the same all you're doing is moving your thumb so you have thumb pointer middle pointer ring pointer middle pointer all right so hopefully you're starting to get the hang of the pattern now so with our E minor chord it's going to look like your G your thumb is going to go back to that sixth low E string six three two three one three two three and I get this comment a lot yes if you're playing the E minor and you're picking you don't have to hold down your left hand you could do that without fretting any chord shapes all right and then the last chord we have is our c chord for this your thumb is going to move to this fifth a string all right but the rest of the pattern is the same so we have five three two three one three two three foreign so now that we've gone over the fingerings for each of these cords all you want to do is practice you know using your right hand to finger pick these strings if that's something that's new to you but once you get the hang of the pattern down you would just string these together so we have g d e liner C let's go ahead and finish out this little verse we have G back to D again C to G all right so basically the hardest part of this picking pattern is just going to be getting that finger coordination down on how to pick the pattern but once you have it the actual song is pretty easy to play because your right hand is following the same pattern so speeding it up and pairing it with singing the whole song would sound like this for all the acquaintance for the sake of all things all right and that's how you could play through the whole song with picking pattern one all right guys and finally we've made it to my favorite way to play this song which is kind of a finger Style version so um basically I came up with a tab for you to play The Melody of this song that uses mostly open strings so it'll be super beginner friendly for anyone who's new to finger style so you can see it here on screen I wanted to first take you through this tab one note at a time before I show you how to add in some of those chord shapes to make it sound a little more full so basically if you don't know how to read tabs then make sure to visit my video right here where I teach you how to do that in more detail but basically we're going to utilize mostly open strings to play through this song so starting on our D string you just want to pick that open then go next door and pick that g string open and then here on the next note I would recommend using your pinky to cover that four and that'll make sense in a second when we put all of this together so we have open open pinky then you go back to open then open B then here for the D chord I would go ahead and use your pointer finger to cover the second fret of the G string then you go open then you put it back on then you go next door open B okay then we're here on this next little section you're going to take your pointer finger off and we're going to play this g string twice then go next door to open B then for this third fret I would recommend using your ring finger and then open e all right so that's the first little line there oh all right so you can see we're using a lot of those open strings so it's going to be a lot easier for those of you who are new to reading tabs let's go ahead and go into the next line so starting here we're going to have our open E string then again I'd recommend your third finger for that third fret then open B twice then we have our open G then again for this second fret I would use your pointer finger again take it off put it back on then we have our open B next door all right then you take off your pointer finger play this open and then I would recommend using your middle finger for the second fret of that D string open and then open all right so that second line goes like this thank you all right great so the rest of the tab is pretty similar but let's go ahead and go into the third little line here again you're starting on your open high e ring finger for this third fret of the B string open next door then use your pointer finger all right then again so here's where it changes a little bit you're going to put your ring finger back on and then you have your open E string all right so that whole line sounds like this all right great we're almost done the last line is going to be the same as the second line so to finish it out it would sound like this nice so just make sure to pause and go through this tab slowly like I said most of it is just open string so it should be fairly simple so basically I wanted you to practice doing this with just the melody line because then when you add in some of these little strums for the chords it'll be not as hard especially if you're using the fingers that I suggested for those threaded notes so the last little step to playing this kind of quote unquote finger style would be wherever I'm notating on screen you'll see like a little rectangle that's where we're going to strum an entire chord okay but all the while we're still going to be playing this melody line so for example in the first line you're still starting on that open D string but now instead of just playing that open G string we're going to actually strum our entire G chord so you can hear how it kind of just fills in that space and makes it sound a lot more full so then what you would do is after you strum that G chord you would just go straight into continuing the rest of that pattern okay and so this is why I suggested using your pinky here for this first freted note is just because when you have your G chord down your pinky is kind of available to cover that note all right so the first little line sounds like this then here on this next little rectangle you want to strum your entire D chord all right but then again just continue with that Melody line then here the next one is our E minor contain ER then here we're going to strum our c chord so that first line with those chords in the melody line sounds like this nice so in our next line same thing you're going to start with that open e then here when you play this next G chord in this rectangle I think it would be better if you do that four finger G where your ring finger is down that way you can cover that Melody note then we have C then G all right so that whole line sounds like this nice so let's go ahead and finish out this song the next line here we're starting with our open e and then we're four finger G again then we have our D chord then here we're going to go back to that open E four finger G again C right then again like I said earlier this last line is just like the second one G with the four fingers c chord foreign and that is the entire like way to play this finger style so you don't have to sing the melody you could play it on your guitar instead like I said it should be pretty beginner friendly for those of you who are new to finger style or new to picking but yeah that is my favorite way to play this song and I would totally recommend it if you are someone who's new to finger picking or finger style guitar thank you congratulations not only are you at the end of this video but it is getting really close to New Year's I can't believe it but I hope this video helped you learn how to play This Old Lang sign song it's one of those Classics that everybody knows around this time of year so hopefully you had fun learning it with me if you did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on any other new guitar tutorials another thank you goes out to Enya music and black mountain cakes for sponsoring today's video as well as a special shout out to my top patrons over on my patreon page I'll make sure to list all of their names on screen right now and of course a huge thank you to all of my patrons for supporting my channel and making videos just like this impossible you guys are awesome 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 I'm working on I'll pull you guys on what you want to learn next and I'll even do giveaways on there a few times a year so make sure to check it out um but with that being said I think that ends the video so thank you so much for watching I really hope that it helped and happy New Year bye foreign