betty by Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
betty
C, C/B, Am, G, F, Fm, Em, D, F#maj, Bm, A
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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 betty by taylor swift 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 also follow me on instagram for your chance to win a free lesson with me why you switched your home room but i think it's because of me right guys and before we jump into today's tutorial i did want to just give a big thank you to today's sponsor black mountain picks black mountain picks are thumb picks that use an innovative spring design to hold the pick securely to your thumb i've loved using these recently because not only are they super comfortable affordable and durable but they don't slide or flip around on your thumb like other thumb picks i've used in the past these picks fit multiple playing styles and are perfect for when you want to alternate between picking and strumming with ease that makes them great for beginners and professionals alike no matter what stage you're at in your guitar journey best of all you'll get fast shipping and awesome customer service with every purchase so if you're interested in trying these out for yourself make sure to check out the link in my description and never lose another pick while playing your guitar again alright so to play this song in the original key like taylor swift go ahead and have your guitar in standard tuning and you do not need a capo to play this song however it is going to fall a little bit more towards the intermediate level of guitar playing because there are 11 chords to play through this song as well as five different strumming patterns i want to show you and one picking pattern of course all of these are optional you can decide which ones you like and you know mix and match however you want but um this is going to be a little bit more in depth of a tutorial so let's go ahead and just jump into the overview of what i'll be teaching you in this video all right so like i said there are 11 chords to play through this song because there is a key change at the end and that's just always going to add more chords but the chord you need to know to play this song are c b a minor g f f minor e minor d f sharp major b minor and a so those are the 11 chords i will be teaching you in this tutorial and just keep in mind that the f the f minor and the f sharp major and the b minor those are all going to be barre chords so if that's something that you're having troubles you know getting down and anything like that make sure to check out my tmt right here on how to get better at practicing those barre chords but um yeah anyways if you are familiar with all of these chords that's perfect and we can move on however if you do want me to show you how to play those and break them down and show you the chord charts and all of that stuff make sure to skip to this time right here where i will go over all of these chords with you after that we're going to jump into these strumming patterns that you can use for this song like i said i'm going to be showing you five different strumming patterns that i personally like to use in my cover however you can always pick and choose which ones you like and which ones you can handle and which ones you think sound best but the first drumming pattern is just going to be one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change i always suggest beginners start this way especially if you are not used to singing and playing guitar at the same time this is a really great way to kind of ease into that um and i do actually use this strumming pattern throughout the um throughout my cover as well so if you want me to break this down for you a little bit go over how to use it in the song make sure to skip to this time right here however if you feel like you don't need to go through that then that's fine let's go ahead and go into the second strumming pattern all right so as you can see the second strumming pattern i will be showing you is just eight down strums and it's going to sound a little something like this now i like to use this pattern for the very end of the pre-choruses as well as the bridge so if you want me to go through an example of how to break this down and give you a little bit more details on the rhythm and things like that make sure to skip to this time right here however if you feel like you already got the rhythm just by watching me then let's go ahead and move on to strumming pattern three so strumming pattern three is the main strumming pattern that i like to use in my cover here at the end as you can see it's down down up down up down down up and it's going to sound a little something like this now this strumming pattern is going to be a little bit more complicated because i do like to switch chords in the middle of the strumming pattern which is denoted by this little vertical line that you see so i would suggest going ahead and skipping to this time here so that i can further explain the strumming pattern to you however if you feel like you already got the rhythm and everything just by watching this little overview then that's fine we can move on to strumming pattern four so strumming pattern four as you can see is really simple it's just two down strums and a mute and it's gonna sound a little something like this now i use this strumming pattern very seldomly in the song it's just in the middle of the bridge but i am including it in case you want to play it the way that i played my cover so if you want to break this down a little bit and let me show you where i use that then make sure to skip to this time here where i will explain that however if you feel like you don't need to do that we can move on to strumming pattern five alright so strumming pattern five as you can see is down up down down down down and it's going to sound a little something like this so this strumming pattern comes into play a lot towards the end of the song and it's also going to be one of those ones where i'm changing chords in the middle of the strumming pattern so if you want me to break this down for you and kind of slow down and show you where those chord transitions are going to be and how to use it in the song and things like that make sure to skip to this time here where i will further explain it however if you feel like you don't need to go through that and you can already hear the rhythm and things just from this overview then let me go ahead and show you what i will be teaching for the picking pattern all right the picking pattern for this song is going to be one of those ones that's actually really easy to play but sounds really beautiful as you can see we're going to be playing the bottom note of each chord and then the third second and third string so it's going to sound a little something like this so if you want me to explain that picking pattern in a little bit more detail zoom in and show you guys what i'm doing make sure to skip to this time here where i will do that and show you guys how to play the faking pattern a little bit more close up however if you feel like you kind of already got the feel of this song and you already feel like you know how to play it just from watching this overview feel free to check out the play through at the end where i will go through the entire song and i'll have the chords and lyrics and everything you need to know listed on screen in front of you but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the more in-depth part of this tutorial and we'll start with the chords all right so i've zoomed in a little bit so we can take a closer look at these chords like i said there are 11 in this song because of that darn key change so let's go ahead and jump into it with our first chord which is c which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got c b which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got a minor which looks like this and sounds like this next we have g which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have f which is one of our bar chords and that looks like this and sounds like this then we have f minor which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got e minor which looks like this and sounds like this after this we're going to jump into some of our key change chords so we're going to start with our d chord which looks like this and sounds like this then we also have our f-sharp major chord which looks like this and sounds like this then we have our b minor chord which is our last bar chord and that looks like this and sounds like this and then the very last chord for this song is our a chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right and those are the 11 chords you need to know to play the song all right so after you have those chords memorized go ahead and take a few moments to practice transitioning between them if that's something that you're currently struggling with i do have a tmt right here on how to practice transitioning between chords faster so make sure to check that out if that's something that you need help with but um moving on let's go ahead and jump into the strumming patterns that you can use for this i song where it all went wrong your favorite song was playing from the far side of the gym all right so like i said at the beginning the very first strumming pattern is the simplest one it's just one down strum on the beat for every chord change again i always suggest that beginners do this because it's really going to help you be able to learn how to practice guitar and sing at the same time and things like that it's also going to prepare you for harder strumming patterns moving forward so let me go ahead and just show you how you would use this in the song if you put your c chord on that's the very first chord in the song and you're just gonna strum it down once then you'd move on to your next chord which is c slash b strum down once then we've got a minor strum down once then we've got g strum down once all right and so basically what you want to do is take this one down strum pattern and practice singing the song with it while you're just doing that one down strum pattern so let's go ahead and go through verse one and i'll just give you an example of how you would use this again i'm starting with my c chord one two three riding on my skateboard when i passed your house it's like i couldn't breathe all right so as you can see super simple it's really great for practicing and if you're a beginner and things like that but i do actually like to use this in the uh cover itself and i'll usually use this at the end of the pre-courses so if you want to see an example of that make sure to watch my play through here at the end um but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the second strumming pattern so as you can see our second strumming pattern is just eight down strums it's a very straightforward rhythm so let's go ahead and just go through what this would sound like i've got my c chord on and you're just gonna strum down eight times one two three four five six seven 8. all right so super simple um but what we're going to do here is we're going to emphasize certain ones of these down strums to kind of give it a little bit more of that rhythmic feel so as you can see i'm going to underline the ones that i want you to emphasize and that's our first our fourth and our seventh beat so when you have that we've got one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight all right so hopefully you can hear when you emphasize those certain beats it kind of drives the rhythm a little bit more and i think that this sounds great with parts of the song i personally like to use this for the very end of the pre-choruses as well as the bridge so let me go ahead and give you an example of what this sounds like in those areas so the first part is at the end of the pre-chorus the worst thing that i ever did was what i did to you so from there i'm going from the first strumming pattern into the second strumming pattern so we've got the worst thing that i ever did was what i did too here on the word u we're gonna do second strumming pattern u all right so we've got our f chord on one two three four five six seven eight then you go to your g chord one two three four five six seven eight all right so it is basically the only place i like to use this strumming pattern i will also sprinkle it into the bridge a little bit as well but like i said if you want to hear how i would suggest doing it for your cover you can always look at the play through here at the end where i'll list everything that i'm doing but that does conclude strumming pattern two and how i like to use it so let's go ahead and move on to strumming pattern three so like i said earlier strumming pattern three is going to be kind of the main strumming pattern that i like to use in this song as you can see it's down up down up down down down up so let's go ahead and go through the motions of the strumming pattern first if you have your c chord on since that's the first chord in the song let's just go through the motions we've got all right if you're a beginner i know sometimes this can be hard for beginners so just remember that when you have a down followed by a down strum or an up followed by an up strum it can be a little counterintuitive to remember to kind of circle your hand back around for those double downs or those double ups so just keep that in mind for this strumming pattern but let's go ahead and now put this in rhythm so you guys can hear what this strumming pattern sounds like in rhythm so i'll go ahead and play it for you once one two three four down down up down and down down down and down up down all right awesome so go ahead and put your c chord on and try that with me and i will count us in one two three four down down up down up down down down and down up down up down down down all right awesome so that is the rhythm of this little uh strumming pattern here what i want you to do now is we're going to put a vertical line in the middle of this strumming pattern and that's going to represent where you're going to be doing your chord transition so basically we just practice this whole thing through with our c chord but in the actual song i like to break it up between different chords so in this example we would be going from our c chord for the beginning of this strumming pattern to our c b for the end of it all right so let me go ahead and show you what i mean by that with my c chord on i've got the beginning of the strumming pattern down down up then i'm going to switch to my next chord which is c b and finish it out down up down down up all right so one more time we've got c down up c slash b down up down down down up all right and that's going to be true for the rest of the chord progressions as well so the next would be a minor to g a minor is going to be at the beginning down down up then you go to g and finish it out down up down down down up all right so let's do that whole little um chord progression there we've got our c chord on down all right so go ahead and put your c chord on and let's practice that together without stopping i'll count us in one two three four c a minor b g awesome so let's do that one more time one two three four c b a minor g cool so hopefully you can hear where those chord transitions are going to be in the middle of the strumming pattern and now this is going to apply for most of the song where will we um changing chords in the middle of the strumming pattern however sometimes you do hold this entire strumming pattern out for the entire chord so basically this will make sense when i play through the first little verse for you so let me just show you what i mean notice here how some of these chords are going to be switched in the middle of the strumming pattern and some of them will be held out for the entire strumming pattern so we've got our c chord on down down up down up down down up a minor to g then here on f we're gonna hold out the whole pattern down down up down up down down down up then we go back to g and hold out the whole pattern down up down up down down down up all right so just keep in mind when you're going through this song that sometimes it's going to be switching chords in the middle of the strumming pattern and sometimes you're going to be holding it out for the whole thing so go ahead and put your c chord on and let's play through that together without stopping i'll count us in one two three four c b a minor g f holds i think it's cause of me it's like i couldn't breathe all right cool so hopefully you were able to hear the rhythm of that pattern so again i like to use this for the majority of the song when i'm not picking so that's going to be basically all of the choruses so again if you want to hear an example of how this sounds in the song the way that i would suggest playing it you can always skip to the play through here at the end but um with that being said let's go ahead and jump into our fourth strumming pattern alright so our fourth strumming pattern is arguably one of the easier strumming patterns as you can see it's just two down strums followed by a mute so let me go ahead and show you how this would sound if you put your c chord on that's the first chord in the song and you're just going to strum down twice and then you're going to take your hand and mute the strings so you can do this a number of ways you can have an open hand and just tap the strings to mute them you can also have a fist tap the strings i usually just use the side of my hand here while i'm playing and i'll just kind of mute it that way it doesn't really matter as long as it's comfortable for you and as long as you're stopping the strings from ringing that will accomplish the mute so let me go ahead and just show you how you could use this strumming pattern i'm going to start at the beginning with my c chord we've got c mute c b mute a minor g f twice g twice all right so the thing about my tutorials is that i like to give you guys a bunch of different options for strumming and picking and stuff like that i do have my suggested pattern order at the end but again if any of these streaming patterns are a little bit difficult you can always just choose which one you like the best and apply it for the whole song that being said i do actually only use this strumming pattern a few times in the song and it's going to be in the middle of the bridge so in the bridge portion she sings i was walking home on broken cobblestones just thinking of you when she pulled up like a figment of my worst intentions excellent lyrics by the way um so what i'm doing there is um i'll usually go from strumming pattern two which is the all down strums i was walking home on broken cobblestones just thinking and then here on the f chord that's where i'll do strumming pattern four of you when she pulled up like and then g a favorite of my worst intentions and that's literally the only place i use it throughout the cover at the end i just wanted to throw it in here in case that's a strumming pattern that you like you can use it for the whole song if you want to like i said you always want to just go with whatever you naturally feel rhythmically it's going to help you a ton when you're trying to play through the song and sing at the same time but anyways with that being said we have just one strumming pattern left which is strumming pattern five alright so strumming pattern five is going to be kind of like strumming pattern three in the fact that it's one of the main strumming patterns that i use throughout my little cover at the end as you can see it's down down up down down down and i know it sounds a little bit complicated but i think once you hear the rhythm you're really going to be able to understand where i'm coming from on this one again let's go ahead and just go through the motions so let's put our c chord on since that's the first chord in the song and go through the motions we've got down down up down down down down all right so again it's going to be really important for you to remember to circle your hand around between all those uh sequential down strums so we've got down down up down down down down all right so it'll make a lot more sense when i put this in rhythm so let me go ahead and show you what it sounds like in rhythm one two three four down down up down down down all right so go ahead and put your c chord on and try that with me one two three four down down up down down down down all right awesome so um again this is one of those ones where i'm going to be switching chords in the middle of the strumming pattern so let me put those lines back in there for you again each of these vertical lines represents um a different chord for that little section of the strumming pattern okay and i think again once you hear it'll make a lot more sense so i like to use this drumming pattern at the end of the song and by then we've had a key change so i want to go ahead and use the chords that you'll hear at the end of the song just to have it make more sense so those chords are d a and g all right so what we're gonna do is we're going to break up this strumming pattern and put the d at the beginning the a in the middle and the g at the end so let me play it for you so you can just kind of hear with our d chord on we've got down down up down then we have a down down and then g down all right so you can hear how i'm kind of splitting up this strumming pattern d a and g all right and that is the rhythm two we've got down up down down down down all right so why don't you go ahead and put your d chord on and try that with me with our d chord we're just doing the beginning of this pattern so we've got down down up down then switch your a chord down down and then your g chord down all right so let's do that in rhythm without stopping one two three four all right so hopefully you're kind of hearing the rhythm there again i just like to use this at the end of the song so it is going to mostly be with just those chords so let me just show you again at the end of the song so you can kind of hear what it sounds like with the um singing we've got standing in your cardigan kissing in my car again stopped at a street light you know i miss you all right and that's how i like to use that strumming pattern throughout my cover though at the very end here i actually go back and forth between the fifth and third strumming pattern so i know that sounds really confusing but let me just go ahead and show you how that would sound so with my d chord on i've got strumming pattern five down down up down switch to a down switch to g down and then while i'm on my g chord i'll just go back to strumming pattern three down up down up down down down up i know this sounds super super complicated but trust me if you take each of these strumming patterns and practice it on your own like each one individually then it'll be a lot easier to transition between these different strumming patterns so we've got strumming pattern five on our d chord down again kissing in my car again all right so it gets a little bit hairy there at the end going back and forth between strumming pattern five and three again this is all up to you if you find any of this too complicated or difficult you can always just choose your favorite strumming pattern and go with that for the whole song i think that'll sound great too but i just wanted to kind of explain how i did it in my cover since a lot of you guys were asking how i did mine in my cover so um with that being said that covers all of the strumming patterns that i use in this song so the last thing i wanted to show you guys was a picking pattern that is actually quite simple that sounds really great with this song so let me zoom in and show you guys this picking pattern all right so i've zoomed in a little bit so we can learn this picking pattern together if any of you are unfamiliar with my other tutorials i do like to refer to my strings as numbers so let me just zoom in and show you how i refer to them so my low e string is going to be 6 and that's going to go 5 4 3 2 1 all the way to the high e string which is one and so for the rest of this little picking portion i will be referring to my strings as numbers so hopefully you find that easier to understand like i do um but anyways let's go ahead and jump into it so let me go ahead and show you what we're going to do for each of the chords in this song that we're going to use picking for let's start with our c chord since that's the first chord in the song what i want you to do is with your thumb you're going to be playing the sixth fifth and fourth string depending on you know which chord you're on so for our c chord we're going to be our on our fifth string so go ahead put your thumb on the fifth string then i want you to take your pointer finger and put that on the third g string and then your middle finger and put that on the second b string so for the rest of this picking portion your pointer and your middle finger are never going to stray from these two strings they're always going to be on three and two but your thumb is going to move back and forth between the base note of each chord depending on what chord you're playing so like i said the c chord the bass note is our five so with our c chord we have five three and two and what we're going to do is go five three two three all right that's the whole picking pattern five three two three awesome super simple right so the next chord we have is our c b and this is actually going to look exactly like our c chord so again we've got five three two three all right then we've got our a minor chord again your right hand is not changing we've got five three two three and then for our g chord your right hand is going to change a little because your thumb is going to go from your fifth to your low e string on your sixth okay but the rest of the pattern is the same so we've got six three two three all right so let's go ahead and go through those four chords again because that is the majority of the picking pattern five three two three five 3 2 3 6 3 2 3 c b a minor g awesome so um let's go ahead and go through the other chords you will need to know for this picking pattern the next one we have is our f chord and for this it's going to look like your g chord where on your right hand where you're going to be going six three two three right so for f chord we've got six three two three and then for your e minor chord that's the last chord you'll ever need to you know pick for this song and that's going to look the same it's also 6 3 2 3. all right so just to recap we've got our c chord which is 5 3 2 3 then we've got c b which is five three two three then we've got a minor five three two three then we've got g six three two three we've got f six three two three and we've got e minor six three two three all right and these six chords are the only chords you need to know picking for obviously we are going a little bit slow compared to the you know original song so let's go ahead and speed this up to tempo so you can hear what it sounds like together with singing so go ahead and put your c chord on then let's get through this together at tempo i'll count us in one two three four c b a minor g f twice g twice you got it betty i won't make assumptions about why you switched your homeroom but i think it's cause of me betty one time i was riding on my skateboard when i passed your house it's like i couldn't breathe nice and so basically if you can do that you have basically the entire picking pattern down the only place that it's going to change a little bit is on that very last pre-chorus before the key change to the end of the song she does add that e minor chord in there so for that little run we're gonna go c c b a minor g f and then here instead of holding f twice you're going to go to e minor and then g twice one two all right so it's a little bit different at the end there let me go through that one more time we've got c c b a minor g f e minor g twice all right so um yeah that is how you play the picking pattern again i like to put that for most of the verses in this song but again feel free to stick with strumming if you're more comfortable with that but um with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the play through for the song this is betty by taylor swift good luck betty i won't make assumptions about why you switched your home room but i think it's cause of me betty one time i was riding on my skateboard when i passed your house it's like i couldn't breathe you were the rumors from enes you can't believe a word she says most times but this time it was true the worst thing was but if i just showed up at your party would you have me would you want me would you tell me it was just betty i know where it all went wrong your favorite song was playing from the far side of the gym i was nowhere to be found i hate the crowd you know that plus i saw you dance with him you heard the rumors from inez you can't believe a word she says most times but this time it was true the worst thing that i ever did was would you trust me if i told you it was just i was walking home on broken cobblestones just thinking i love you and she pulled up like all summer long betty i'm here on your doorstep and i've planned it out for weeks now it's finally sinking in betty right now is the last time i can dream about what happens when you see my face again the only thing i want to do is make it up to you so i showed up at your party yeah i showed up at your party of all yeah stupid friends in my car again all right guys so that does conclude today's tutorial on how to play betty by taylor swift i really hope you liked it if it did help you 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 another new tutorial 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 at things coming up i'll pull you guys on things you want to see and this is also where i go to find someone to feature in my new segment forever features this week we have nicole from brazil performing august by taylor swift let's give it a listen are you sure never have i ever before wow you sound amazing nicole if you want to be my next feature follow me on instagram x forever faithful x and post a short cover of you playing any song you learn from any of my tutorials use the hashtag forever features in the description so i can find it and the next feature spot could be you thank you again to black mountain picks for sponsoring today's video it really helps me to be able to continue making these free tutorials for you guys and one last little plug if you liked the shirt i was wearing in today's tutorial this is my oh capo design and you can find this along with a lot of other different designs in my merch store link down below as well as under this video but i think that concludes today's tutorial so thank you again so much for watching i hope it helped and i will see you in my next one bye do you