Blinding Lights by The Weeknd Tutorial/Lesson
Blinding Lights
Dm, Am, C, G
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Video transcript
hey everyone my name is Ellen and today I'm gonna be showing you guys how to play blinding lights by the weekend on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you'd like to learn I've been trying to call so this song is gonna be super beginner friendly because there's only four chords in the whole song they're all open chords so no bar chords required and there's only two strumming patterns that I'm gonna teach you in this video so overall it's very simple you'll want to make sure that your capo is on the third fret if you want to sing this in the original key if you don't have a capo you can always watch my TMT on how to make your own capo or you can follow this tutorial through all the way it'll just be a little bit lower than the original song but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial so for those of you who are familiar with my other tutorials I'm gonna go ahead and do something a little bit new in this video let's go ahead and go through an overview of what this video is going to contain that way those of you who are a little bit more advanced and don't need to sit through the whole tutorial can kind of get an idea and then jump to the end where we play the song together of course if you're a beginner I am still gonna go through everything in more detail so just as an overview let's go ahead and go through the four chords you're gonna need to know for this song we're gonna have D minor a minor C and G so if you know those course then that's great if not then go ahead and skip to this time for the chords and I will go into more detail how to play those after that we're gonna go into these strumming patterns so first we're gonna start with a practice pattern which is just one down strum on every note change so you can kind of get used to the song if you want to go through the practice pattern with me then go ahead and jump to this time here after that we're gonna jump into the first strumming pattern which is just going to be eight down strums and it's gonna sound a little something like this and you can see what I was doing there was kind of emphasizing every other down strum on the even beats and yeah that's basically what we're doing there and I'll be playing that for the verses so if you got that great if you need a little bit more practice than jumped at this time for this first strumming pattern and then our second strumming pattern and our last strumming pattern for this song is just going to be down down up down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this in rhythm alright and we're gonna play that through twice for every chord and I like to use that in the choruses and again specifically if you want to just look at strumming pattern too you can skip to this time so if you kind of got the feel of it already and you think that you got those strumming patterns already and you've know those chords and go ahead and skip to the end time here for the playthrough where we go through the whole song together but if you're more of a beginner and need a little bit more time to digest all of this and get some more practicing then go ahead and continue watching this video and we'll go through everything a little bit more slowly all right so like I said at the beginning there's only four chords for this whole song they're all open chords very beginner friendly so let's go ahead and jump into what those look like all right so let's take a closer look at those chords the first one you need to know is D minor which looks like this and sounds like this all right after that we've got our a minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right good after that we've got C and all you have to move is your third ring finger to here so that looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is G which looks like this and sounds like this all right and those are the only four chords you need to know for the song all right so once you have those chords memorized go ahead and practice right now transitioning between them because this whole song it is very beginner friendly because it follows the same chord progression through the whole song so we go from D minor to a minor to C to G for the entire thing so go ahead and take some time right now to make sure that you can transition between those without having to stop too much and once you have that under your belt then let's go ahead and jump into these strumming patterns that you can use with this okay so the first strumming pattern I always suggest that we start with is kind of a practice pattern which is where you're just gonna do one down strum on every chord change so that you know where those chord changes are going to take place it's gonna make learning other strumming patterns and singing through the song at the end ultimately a lot easier so let's go ahead and put our D minor chord ons and sets the first chord in the song and I just want you to strum it down once then we'll switch to our a minor chord strum that down once then we've got see once and then we've got chi ones all right that's the whole thing that's the whole practice pattern and now I just want you to go through the song and kind of sing through it with just this really simple strumming pattern until you get used to where those transitions aren't going to be alright so I'll go ahead and take you through the first verse just to give you an example of what this would be like I've been trying to I've been on my maybe you can show me coming through it you don't even you can turn me on just a touch babe all right so go ahead and do that exact same thing for the rest of the song until you're familiar with those where those chord transitions are gonna be and then once you have that down let's go ahead and jump into our first strumming pattern so our first strumming pattern is gonna be really super simple it's just eight down strums and we're gonna play this through for each chord so again let's put our D minor chord on and just play it with the down strum eight times so we've got all right that's the whole thing one more time excellent so if you're using a pic like I am then this can be a little bit ringy a really full sound but with the way that I like to play the song I like to use this pattern during the verses which is a little bit more muted so what I like to do is add a little bit of a poem you and what I'm doing there is I'm taking the side of my hand the one that has the pic in it I'm kind of gently resting it between the sound hole and the bridge here and I'm just gonna leave it there while I strum down so you can hear it's kind of muting the strings not that you can't hear them but just so that they don't ring as much okay and so now I'm gonna repeat this exact same pattern but we're gonna have a little bit of a palm mute in there so again we're just doing down eight down strums one two three four five six seven eight so go ahead and try that palm mute with me make sure you're really lightly resting your hand on the strings okay one two three four five six seven eight awesome so again the patterns not changing we're just adding a little bit of a palm mute and then the last thing I want you to do here is we're going to emphasize or accent or just give a little bit more energy to every other down strum okay and we're gonna do this on the even beats so we're doing this on two four six and eight so now instead of having all the same kind of rhythm with this we're going to kind of give it a little bit more rhythm by accenting those so we've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and all I'm doing to kind of accomplish that is I'm just kind of giving it a little bit more energy a little bit more force when I'm doing the even beats so again let's do that again we've got our D minor chord on all eight down strums and we're just adding in that palm mute and then we're emphasizing every other down so you've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 alright so the way we played it just then is very close to tempo we might want to speed it up just a little bit to get closer to the original tempo but now let's go ahead and add in those chord transitions so remember it's going from D minor to a minor to C to G and we're just gonna play this pattern through once for each of those chords so again with our D minor chord on we've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 switch to a minor same thing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 switch to C 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and then we've got G 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 okay so once you kind of incorporate that into the song I think it sounds really good to go from this strumming pattern into the next strumming pattern which I'm about to show you so let's go ahead and jump into our second strumming pattern for this song so as you can see our second strumming pattern for this song is down down up down up and we're gonna play this pattern through twice for each chord change so again let's go ahead and get the rhythm and everything for it so put your D minor chord on since that's the first chord in the song and we're gonna just strum this exact pattern we've got all right let's do that one more time all right great and that's the whole pattern right you just want to double it up now for each chord so let's do that twice two times in a row awesome super simple it's not too long or complicated or anything so once you've got that initial pattern down let's go ahead and work on the rhythm so let me play it through for you once we've got so put your D minor chord on and try it with me again in rhythm we've got all right awesome so now again we're going to be playing this through twice for each chord so let's go ahead and add in the chord transitions now so we've got D minor playing it through twice awesome then you switch to your next chord which is a minor same thing so once you've got the pattern down and you've got those chord transitions in there as well we just want to speed it up just a little bit to get it at the original tempo so let's do that again a little bit faster one two three four but that's about the tempo that I'll be going at the end and one last thing about this strumming pattern you can hear is sometimes when I'm playing it through I will emphasize the second down strum so we've got down to hear that so we've got down again same thing all I'm doing is giving it a little bit more force with my right playing hand awesome so if you want to incorporate that into your showing pattern as well I do think it kind of helps to drive the rhythm of this song so that's the whole second strumming pattern and honestly if you wanted to use that pattern for the entire song I think that would sound really great too I just like to give you guys a few different options of strumming patterns just in case you want to kind of spice up the guitar part a little bit I do think that that sometimes helps with covers and things like that to make the guitar part sound a little bit more interesting and then one last thing I should also mention is in my covers I will sometimes palm mute this second strumming pattern as well so again that's where I'm just gently resting my hand here on the strings really lightly and when you do that with this pattern so you can hear it kind of music a little bit more and I just feel like it sounds a little more rhythmic I think it sounds a little bit more interesting so if you've mastered the palm you and you feel pretty comfortable with it I am going to be paw meeting the pre-chorus is here at the end during my cover so once you have those chords memorized and you've gone through the practice of transitioning through them and you've gotten all the strumming patterns down let's go ahead and jump into the play through here at the end where I will list everything on screen in front of you so you can play through the entire song blinding lights by the weekend no any pizza laughter your time so that was my tutorial for blinding lights by the weekend I really hope that you guys liked it if you did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to comment any other songs that you would like me to do a tutorial for in the future also for those of you who've been subscribed for a long time how did you like that little overview section that I incorporated this time I'm experimenting with my editing so I think that's something that might be a little bit helpful so if you did find that helpful please let me know in the comments below so I know to keep doing that in future videos here are my social media sites in case you'd like to follow me on any of those that's just where I do find little things like behind the scenes peaks and poles and things like that this is also where I go to find people to give shout outs to so if you want a shout out in the next video like this person right here then make sure to follow me on my social media sites and one last little plug if you liked the shirt that I was wearing in today's video this is my guitar forever shirt which you can find on my official forever faithful merch store which is linked down below and you'll also see the merch down under this video every single purchase helps to make this channel just a little bit better so thank you guys to all of you who have been supporting me in that way but yeah that concludes this video I hope you guys liked it and I will see you in the next one bye