Birds of a Feather by Billie Eilish Tutorial/Lesson
Birds of a Feather
D, Bm7, Em7, Em7/A, 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 birds of the Feather by Billy ish on my Orange Wood Brooklyn guitar so if you like what you see I will make sure to link more information about it down below um I want to give a special shout out and thank you to my patrons for voting on this song as this month's Patron pick so if you want a little bit of voting power in the songs you see me Teach here on my channel make sure to check that out I will link that down below as well here is 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 only need to know five different chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our D which looks like this and sounds like this all right so next chord is our B minor 7 after that we have our E minor 7 then we have our E minor 7 over a and then the last chord shape is our regular a all right and those are the only five 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 memorize those chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them cuz it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you and once you have that down we can go ahead and talk about these strumming patterns that I would recommend for this song So for anyone familiar with my channel you'll know that I always start you guys off with a practice pattern and this is great for people who are just starting out on guitar or you're somebody who struggles with singing while playing at the same time so basically my suggestion would be to bring up the song and go ahead and play through the entire thing with a single down strum as you sing through the song and just take this time to really get used to what word you're singing or what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look like I want you to stay till I'm in the grave till I R away dead and bar I'm in the you car all right so that's just a quick example but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song and this is really great cuz it'll tell you certain things for example you just saw we are going to be repeating each chord for two measures except for the last E minor 7 over a to the a each of those just gets one measure so that's just an example of things that you'll find out as you do the single down strum and this actually 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'll make sure to leave that link in the description box for you but once you've done that and you're ready to move on we can talk about the more full strumming pattern that I would recommend for this song all right guys so as you can see we are going to be in a 16th note count for this strumming pattern so if you don't know what I mean by that or how to count that I would recommend checking out my beginner Series right here um because I do go over that there um but basically it's going to sound like this we have one E and A two e and a three e and a four E and A one E and A 2 e and a three e and a four E and A down up up down up up down down up down up up down up up down up all right so essentially what you want to do is like I said earlier we're going to repeat this strumming pattern two times for each chord until the end of our phrasing when we go from our E minor 7 over a to our a chord then each of those two chords is just going to get one time through the pattern so let's go ahead and apply this to the song so let's look up verse one what we're going to do here is we're starting with our D and we're going to do this entire pattern twice through so we have down up up down up up down down up twice all right then we go to our next chord B minor 7 1 2 E minor 7 down up up down up up down up again and then remember for these last two chords we're only going to do this pattern through one time each so for E minor 7 over a we have down up up down down up switch quickly to a down up up down up up down down all right so that's how you're going to play the entire song the entire song follows this chord progression in this order um so how we just practiced it now is how you can apply it but the one thing that you will need to probably work on is speeding this up so that we can play it at the original Tempo so closer to the full Tempo it's going to sound more like this we have down up up down down up up down down up twice E minor 7 twice eor 7 down up up down up up down down up B minor 7 a to a you got it stay till I'm in the till I run a way dead and till I'm in the F get all right awesome so if you are new to strumming and this whole thing is very overwhelming for you I did actually just start a brand new practice with me strumming Series where I build these strumming pattern rhythms with you together in real time and we'll slowly speed them up so I'll make sure to link the one that goes with this video right here um but basically if you practice this Rhythm and kind of get it internalized to the point where you're doing your muscle memory and you're not counting it in your head so much then it should be easier to put that singing on top okay so this is a process so just make sure to give yourself plenty of time to work on each step so that was an example of the verse but like I said you can use this exact strumming pattern with this exact chord order for the entire song so let's go ahead and look at the chus it's going to be exactly the same words of each other we should stick together I know I said I never think I was a better orone can't change forever but not be forever but if it's forever it's even better all right and again for the precourse same thing don't know what I'm crying for I don't think I could love you more it might not be long with than I and then again the I till the day that I die till light eyes till the day they are done all right so I think that covers all the different parts of the song as you can see we are using the exact same straming pattern with the exact same chord order for the entire song So once you get it memorized it should be fairly easy to play through but there is one last little part of the song that I think stands out to me that I wanted to show you guys how to play which is that little like solo Line tab that you kind of hear throughout the song So once you're ready to do that we can go ahead and look at that solo tab 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 like I said earlier it's so important to develop that muscle memory so that you can play this pattern through without really thinking about it or counting it in your head it should come pretty naturally at some point in time which is why I would recommend again practicing with my practice with me series um but once you get that struming pattern under your belt then let's go ahead and jump into how to play that tab all right guys so let's go ahead and jump into that little tab that we hear throughout the song um it's really simple to play but first of all if you don't know how to read tabs I did make a video right here about how to read tabs it's really fun and interactive so I would definitely check that out if you're interested um but basically for this one we're just going to be staying on our bottom two strings our B and our E string and what I think is the best easiest way to do this is to take your middle finger we're going to place that on the third fret of our B string and then you're going to stretch your pinky and place that on the fifth fret of the E string all right so you're going to go back from b e to B all right from here you just want to take off your middle finger and you're going to have your um index finger right behind it on the second fret of that b string all right and then again fifth on the E string back to B and then these two little groups of notes they just repeat themselves over and over so I would recommend keeping your index finger and your pinky down the whole time and then you're just going to concentrate on putting your middle finger down and taking it off so we've got take your middle finger off put it back on take it off all right and that goes throughout the entire song all right and it's that simple if you have a friend to play with one of you guys could do this little Tab while the other one does the strumming I think that's always really fun to do um of course this is totally optional so if you don't want to do this you could also just completely leave it out as well but that's just a super simple way to play that tab that you can hear kind of throughout the entire song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video if you do want to add this little tab in there I think it sounds really fun to layer it on top of some strumming and it's super easy to get down if you are somebody who's new to kind of more of that finger picking style so again totally optional this entire section but if you want to add and I do think it's really fun to do that but once you get back we can go ahead and combine everything we've learned in this tutorial including the cords the transitions the strumming even that little solo tab and put it all together to play through the song One 2 ready go I want you to stay till I ride away dead and till I take a to get you you go 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 playong 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