Beautiful Things by Benson Boone Tutorial/Lesson
Beautiful Things
D, A, E, E7, F#m, Bm
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Video transcript
hey my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Beautiful Things by Benson Boon on the guitar today I Am featuring my Orange Wood Brooklyn guitar so if you like what you see I will definitely have more information about it linked down 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're going to need to know six different chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our D 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 check that out right there the next chord shape is our a major we also have our E major and then we have our E7 and then our last two chords are going to be bar chords we've got our fshp minor and we also have our B minor and those are the only six chords you need to know to play through this song so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them cuz it'll will make learning the rest of the song so much easier on you and if you're somebody who's currently struggling with those bar chord shapes or making those bar chord transitions I would definitely recommend checking out my bar chord miniseries right here on YouTube I'll link that in the corner for those of you who need it but once you have those chords down then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would recommend for this song all right so as I always say if you are brand new to playing guitar or you're somebody who struggles with playing guitar while singing at the same time the first thing I would suggest doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and go through the entire thing with a single down strum on each chord change as you sing through the song and you want to take the time to really get used to what word or what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look like for a while there it was rough but lately I've been doing better for the last cold for dece I recall all right so that's just a really quick example but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song and just really make sure you know where those cords are going to be changing and this actually something you need 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 to leave that link in the description box um but once you've done that and you're comfortable with those chord transitions then we can go ahead and add to this to make a more full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so for today's strumming pattern as you can see it's pretty simple we're just sticking with all down strums however the count is going to be a little bit more unique in the fact that we're counting with triplets so each beat is going to get three sub beats okay so it's going to sound like this we've got 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 down down down down down down down all right so pretty simple on the surface um and then the other thing is I'm going to go ahead and add a vertical line here in the middle and what this is going to represent is where we're going to want to switch chords so what you see on the screen is a full measure but we're going to actually be playing like half measures for each of these chords so for example let's go ahead and bring up that first verse we're starting here on our D chord what you want to do is play it for the left half of the pattern so for D we have one and a two and a then switch to a and finish it out three and four and and then same with the next line we've got e 1 and a 2 and a to F minor and finish it out three and a four and all right so a lot of this song does follow this progression so without stopping it'll sound like this we've got d a e FP minor and something you might be hearing me doing is I'm accenting the beat so I'll go ahead and turn these arrows green and basically what I'm doing there is I'm just strumming those beads with a little extra emphasis so um one way you can think about it too is like when you're strumming a chord let's say like your E chord when you're doing an accent you want to strum all the strings but when you're doing those non- accented so the rest of the purple arrows you can kind of just concentrate more on like the B strings um totally optional but if you do add that in it does help Drive the Rhythm forward and keep track of where you're at in the song but basically what you want to do is you can apply this pattern for almost the entire song so let me go ahead and put a little bit of lyrics in there so you can hear how it sounds together for a while there it was rough L the I've been doing better for the last four cold Decembers I recall all right so there's an example on that E chord where you do want to hold it out for the whole measure I'll have that all listed on the guide that's on my patreon page that you can download um but anyways the thing with this strumming pattern is it does really fill out like the entirety of the song like the guitar basically becomes the focal point so if you don't like how that sounds one thing you can do is you can add a pal mute to this strumming pattern so what I'm doing there is I'm taking the side of my hand with my pick in it and I'm ever so gently kind of laying it on the guitar strings right above where the bridge of my guitar is and if you kind of hold your palm there as you strum down you'll hear how it kind of dampens the sound of the strings all right so it's not ringing out as much so I prefer playing it with a pal mute I do think it sounds closer to the original song this is the strimming pattern that you you could totally use for the entire song one thing that you can do that's super easy to change about it is on the and and the uh of the second and the fourth beat um you can just completely ignore those so essentially now we have four down strums so you'd be like one and uh two and then mute your strings I'm just taking my hand stopping the strings from ringing so you have one and two three and a four 1 and a 2 3 and a four all right so I like to use this strumming pattern where I'm kind of muting the strings in between when we get into that first like chorus if you listen to the song it's fairly intuitive where you want to add these kinds of things in and again I will show you how I would recommend playing this in my play along but um basically you would go please stay I want you I need need you oh God don't take these beautiful things that I've got and then right there is where I would go back to the full pattern the beautiful things that I've got all right there is one last thing I wanted to show you guys which is kind of more of a picking pattern that I think sounds really close to the original song so let's go ahead and and talk about that next all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this strumming Rhythm under your belt it looks pretty simple on the surface but with those accents and PM mutes and things like that there is plenty to practice as well so go ahead and pause and take as much time as you need to do that and then once you get back I can show you the cool little picking pattern that you kind of hear at the beginning of the song it's actually super easy to do so let's go ahead and talk about it all right guys so for this picking pattern it's going to be pretty similar to strumming so on your left hand you're still holding all the cord shapes and on your right hand you still have a pick but what we're going to do is instead of strumming all the strings we're going to kind of separate them okay so for example on our D chord you're going to pick the low strings individually first and then strum the rest okay so for D we essentially have 4 3 2 and 1 and then you want to do that for the other chords as well so for a you're going to start your strum right on your a string we normally do but you're going to pick it individually 5 4 and then all the rest all right looking at e same thing we've got our pick on the low E string individual and then all together all right moving to our F minor same thing all right and this picking pattern I think sounds the best at the very intro of the song so instead of doing a single downst strum you could also go like this all right and then if you want to sound it even closer to the original what we can do is actually add some hammer arms okay so this is going to apply for the D chord and the a chord so go ahead and put your D chord on your left hand what you want to do is start with your middle finger off okay and as it rings on this E string you're going to hammer on your middle finger to the second fret to complete that D chord shape all right so you're only picking it once with your pig but you should hear two notes because of the hammer on okay and same thing you want to put that in context with the picking pattern I just showed you so for D you would go 4 3 and then hammer on okay one more time all right and then for the a chord same thing you're going to start with your a chord with your ring finger off and then you're going to hammer on with your ring finger to the second fret Okay so we've got all right super subtle but it really makes it sound a lot more pretty a lot more full and a lot more like the original so for D we've got hammeron a we've got hammeron and then for the other two chords E and F Shar minor I would just do the regular picking pattern all right so with a little bit of singing in there you can hear how it comes all together for a while rough but lately I've been doing better than the last four cold Decembers I recall all right so I would recommend this for the entire little first verse intro of this song and that good every day for the here we're going to do single down drums for the girl he s my way all right back to picking but I know the he gives me he can take away and then when you get to the second ver I would just go back to that Palm muted all down strums all right but yeah this is the picking pattern that I would recommend it's super easy you can almost think of it as just like a slow kind of strumming pattern too um but if you apply that to the intro of the song or like that first first first I think it sounds really great but again totally optional and up to you all right guys so again one last time go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get this picking pattern under your belt it's fairly simple I think the hardest thing is probably getting your pick to the right strings whenever you're picking but that's something that will come with time the more you practice it so definitely pause and practice as long as you need and then when you get back we can put together everything we've learned in this tutorial the cords the transitions the strumming the picking if you want all together to play through the song for a while was rough but lately I've been doing better than the last four cold Decembers I recall and I see want to have fun jaming 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 for that 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'll see you over there bye