Believer by Imagine Dragons Tutorial/Lesson
Believer
Am, F, E, G, E7
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Video transcript
thank you hey everyone it's Ellen here again and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Believer by imagine dragons on the guitar as requested by my patrons over on my patreon page who voted for this song as this month's Patron picks so if you want a little bit of voting power make sure to check out my patreon page but uh go ahead and stay tuned if 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 Burrows guitars if you're looking for a quality beginner guitar that is both durable and beautiful while still having an affordable price tag consider a Burrows designed in and named after the five boroughs of New York City these are the perfect starter guitar for anyone excited to begin their music Journey not only are they super easy and fun to play but these guitars are the best you'll find at this inexpensive price point with six different models and several finishes to choose from you'll be sure to find the one that fits your personality and musical tastes perfectly best of all all bros guitars ship directly and exclusively from Adorama a trusted site for all your creative needs so if playing guitar is something you or a loved one have been considering check out the links in the description box and get started today so I'm going to go ahead and classify this song as pretty beginner friendly but let's go ahead and talk about our guitar you will need it to be in standard tuning and you'll have your Capo on your first fret if you want it to be in the same key as the original song today I'm going to show you five different chords one of them is a bar chord which is f but it will also show you an alternate fingering in case you're struggling with bar chords and then there's one strumming pattern that you can apply for the whole song as well as one picking pattern that you kind of hear throughout it so I will cover all of that in this tutorial today but let's go ahead and start with the chords alright so like I said you only need to know five different chord shapes to play through the entire song and we're going to start with our a minor which looks like this and sounds like this and by the way if you don't know how to read these chord charts that you're seeing on screen I Do cover how to do that in my beginner series episode 3 so I will make sure to link that right here for those of you who need it moving on our next chord is our E chord then we have our E7 foreign and we're going to finish things off with our bar chord shape which is our f but of course as promised if bar chords are hard for you you can also replace this with an F major seven and those are the chords you need to know to play the song Alright guys as always if any of these chord shapes are new to you or hard for you to play just make sure to pause the video and take a few minutes to practice memorizing them as well as transitioning back and forth between them it really will help make the song easier to play as we move forward but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern so if you are familiar with any of my other tutorials I do always start you guys off with a practice pattern which is just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change I always suggest beginner start here as well as people who have trouble singing and playing at the same time because it does Orient you to the rest of the song and makes everything a little bit easier so as an example let's go ahead and put the first verse here on screen and all I want you to do is do one simple down strum with every chord change that you see here and just kind of take a mental note of what word you're singing while you're doing it one two ready go first things first time I say all the words inside my head I'm fired up and tired of the way that things have been oh the way the things all right so basically you would want to do that for the rest of the song and you can already tell things for example how we are holding out that a minor a little bit longer than we're holding out the F and the E chord these are all things that you'll figure out as you go through the song with just a simple down strum so if you are a beginner I would suggest that you do this first this is actually something you can do right now I have this whole guide available on my patreon page so you can download and print it out and go through it so make sure to check that out I will make sure to link it in the description down below as well as in this I card up here but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the full strumming pattern alright guys so the strumming pattern I would suggest for this song as you can see is just down down down up and it's going to sound a little something like this foreign so now that you've heard the Rhythm let's go ahead and pair it with one of our chord shapes let's just hold down our a minor and I'm going to play through this for a few measures and I just want you to jump in whenever you start to feel the rhythm and start to get the hang of it so I'll count us in one two ready go down down down up down down down up foreign so this strumming rhythm is pretty straightforward and you can use it for the entire song it sounds pretty good but one thing to remember is that sometimes you will want to repeat this pattern through twice for a chord whereas other times you're going to only repeat it or not repeat it you're only going to play it once so for example if we put the first first back up on screen you can see here the a minor is going to be played twice with this trimming pattern but the F and the E are only going to be played once so you'd go a minor down down again down down down down up then your f is once down down down down up e is once down down down all right nice and like I said this strumming pattern can be applied for the whole song so let's just quickly go over how it would sound in the chorus as well so it's the same pattern down down down up down down down right so basically you could go through the whole song and play through it with this strumming pattern right now but I wanted to show you something that you can do to kind of change up the strumming pattern just a slight bit if you want to so it's totally optional but something you can add to this is kind of do a little bit more of a chucking motion which is just when you're making kind of a sound with your guitar but you're not actually like fretting any chords so basically what I like to do is while I'm strumming with my right hand instead of letting it ring I just kind of take the palm the side of my palm of my hand and kind of press it down on the strings as I strum so it kind of just makes this kind of like chucking motion like that you can kind of hear the cord through it depending on how lightly or you know not lightly you do this motion so if you want to make this strumming pattern sound a little bit more rhythmic which kind of matches the song a little bit more I would recommend putting this little chucking action at the first down strum in the pattern so now it would sound more like this foreign so if you like the way that sounds I do think it kind of makes it a little bit more Punchy which kind of you know reminds me of the original song but it's totally optional if you want to put that in there or not um but with that being said let's go ahead and zoom in so I can show you this picking pattern is going to be super easy and it actually repeats throughout the entire song so you could actually play through it with just the picking if you wanted something to remember on the left hand is you can actually hold the chord shapes down so a minor F an e this will also work if you do your F major seven um but the thing that I have found easiest is actually just to use on your left hand the fingers that you need okay so the way that I like to play this is I will put my middle finger here on the second fret of the G string and then my first finger goes on the first fret of the B string and those are the only two notes you need to hold down for this first part of the picking and then on my right hand with my pick I like to pick down on the G string and then up on the B string so you're essentially going down up down up whenever you're doing this picking foreign so basically you want to hold this out for two measures one two three four one two three four then you would go into your F chord and again remember you can hold the whole chord shape down what I actually like to do is I will just take my ring finger and put that on the third fret of the D string on your right hand your pick is going to move up one string now to the D string but you're still going to play the B string when you do your up pick so again you're going down up down up and this one's going to follow like the strumming pattern you just want to do it for one measure one two three four then you would end it on your E chord and again you can do the whole cord shape here what I like to do is I will just take off my ring and my middle finger and move my pointer finger over one string to the first fret of the G string and then when you pick this you can actually just pick the open string of the B string and remember on your pick hand you're still doing that down up motion okay so then you do this for one measure one two three four so slowly through the whole thing um with my fingers the way that I like to play them it's just going to be your middle and your first finger you're gonna go one two three four one two three four then put your ring finger down next door one two three four then take your fingers off and then put your first finger over one string a whole picking pattern if you listen carefully in the song it actually repeats throughout almost the entire thing so like I said you could just play this picking pattern with your cover if you wanted to so let's go ahead and do that a little bit more at Tempo and without stopping one two ready go one two three four one two three four one two three four foreign and again you could use this for the entire song if you wanted to the way that I like to break this song Down is I will do the picking for the verses and then I'll move into strumming for the pre-chourses and the chorus and then I like to do that kind of chucking pattern with the pre-chorus and then let all of the strings ring for the courses but I'll go over all of that in my playthrough here so let's go ahead and jump into playing through the song ready go first things first time I say all the words Wanna Have Fun jamming out to the rest of the song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page where you can unlock access to this as well as all my other Fast Track and play along tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below as well as in this icard right up here alright guys but that does it for me today I really hope that this helped you if it 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 tutorial another thank you goes out to Burrows guitars for sponsoring this video as well as a special shout out to my top patrons over on my patreon page I will make sure to list all of their names on screen right now and of course thank you to all of my patrons for supporting my channel and helping me make videos just like this one possible you guys rock here are my social media accounts 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 at things coming up 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 I will see you in my next one bye thank you