Brain Stew by Green Day Tutorial/Lesson
Brain Stew
Ab5, Gb5, F5, E5, Eb5
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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 brain stew by green day on the guitar so 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 donner who actually sent me over this guitar that i'm playing in this video this is their dst 400 i would say that after playing on it for a while it's very comparable to like a stratocaster um but it is a little bit more affordable you can get this right on amazon and shipped to you in two days one of the special things to note about this guitar is that it does come with the two single coil pickups and a humbucker on the bridge which can also be like a single coil or humbucker if you are interested in this guitar i do have an affiliate link in the description box down below but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial so for anyone that follows my channel you'll know that i mostly stick with acoustic guitar when i do these tutorials but recently i've been trying to pick up electric a little bit more and this is actually one of the very first songs i ever learned on electric guitar so i thought it'd be a really beginner friendly song to show you guys who are also beginners so from one beginner to another here are some tips and tricks on how to play this song that i've struggled with and kind of worked through and hopefully some of these tips will be helpful for you so i would definitely qualify this song as super beginner friendly you will need your guitar to be tuned down a half step for the easiest way to play it in my opinion and then on top of that i only have five chords to show you and they're all power chords which are super beginner friendly as well and then i just have one strumming pattern to show you for like the main part of the song and then you can add a little bit extra into it to kind of do that like feedback sound but we'll go into that in the strumming portion but that's it after you do that you can play through the entire song so it's really super easy so with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the chord all right guys so before we jump into the chord shapes really quick i wanted to remind you that your guitar does need to be in a half step down tuning if you're going to follow this tutorial if you don't know how to do that i did make a video right here on the easiest way to tune your guitar down a half step so i'll link that here for those of you who need it but once you are a half step down your string should sound like this all right so once they are half step down you only need to know five different chord shapes and actually they're all the same chord shape we're just going to be sliding our hand up and down so i'll show you what i mean the first chord shape you need to know is our a flat five so what you want to do is put your pointer finger on the fifth fret of the low e string and then your ring and your pinky fingers are going to go on the seventh fret of the a and the d strings so that's your a flat five power cord and then from here all you want to do is slide your entire left hand down two frets but you're going to keep that same shape this is our g flat 5 chord slide your hand one more fret down that's your f5 chord one more fret down e5 and then the last chord here you're going to take off your pointer finger and slide your remaining two fingers down one more fret our e flat five okay so you can see how our chords are all the same shape we're just moving it around the neck of our guitar the fact that you don't have to move your left hand to do different chord shapes is actually one of the reasons i think this is super beginner friendly so uh make sure to pause and just practice those chord shapes but then when we get back we will talk a little bit more about the strumming all right guys so a quick side note before we jump into the strumming is you'll notice when you do kind of like open chord shapes on acoustic guitar that you're going to be strumming all of your strings for these power chords you only want to strum the strings the top three strings that we're actually playing okay e a d but what i've noticed as a beginner myself is that sometimes it can be really hard especially when using a pick to only strum those three strings because if you accidentally strum all of them it sounds really bad so um one of the things that i've noticed makes it a little bit easier if you're like me and struggle to only strum the strings you need is you can actually mute all of the other strings so the top three you can do that with your first finger so if you put your pointer finger on the fifth fret of the low e string for a flat five instead of arching your finger like you normally would for like an acoustic open chord what you want to do is actually kind of lay it more flat on purpose because if you lightly touch those top three strings you're actually going to be muting them which is what we want because when we put the rest of the cord shape down and then you strum through all the strings but you have the top three muted you actually can't hear those little top three strings so it doesn't sound bad but you can still strum all six strings all right and this is true for all of the other chords as well so for there like i'm strumming all of the strings with my right hand but it's my left hand that's muting the top three strings that's allowing me to do that so kind of just experiment on your own which one is easier for you is it easier to just strum the top three strings with your pick or is it easier to strum all of them but kind of lightly touch the bottom three strings with your first finger so that you can mute them it sounds the same ultimately so whichever one's easier for you is what i would go with but now that we've kind of covered that let's go ahead and talk about the strumming so this whole song strumming pattern is going to be so easy all you're going to do is a double down strum on your right hand so on our a flat five we've got down down all right then we have down down on g flat down f5 down down e5 down down e flat five and so with the rhythm it's gonna be like this three four two three four one two three four all right so on that last e5 to e flat five you're going to split that in to one measure whereas all the other ones are going to be rested so the rhythm goes down down two three four down down two three four down two three four all right so that last one is going to be a little bit different there if you're familiar at all with the song this should be pretty uh intuitive but basically that's the whole strumming pattern and for any time that he is singing you can actually use that having trouble trying to sleep i'm all right something to kind of add on to this strumming pattern is in the bridge sections where there's more like guitar it's more guitar and instrumental heavy you will hear a little bit more of this like feedback kind of sound so for the strumming there all you want to do is take the original two down strums but instead afterwards we're going to add in a few more kind of muted chucking down and up strum so you're going to go down down up down up down up all right so i'm going to show you guys how to do that if you are pressing down on your strings anytime you strum it you're going to hear all of those strings right but um the trick to doing this kind of like sound is what you want to do is lightly touch your strings just barely touch them it's almost like you're muting them like we were talking about earlier so you're just barely touching your strings and so now when you hear when you strum it kind of doesn't make like a chord sound it has more of that like chucky sound all right and that's all we want to do is we want to lighten up on our left hand to make that chucky sound and you just want to do it into the rhythm so you have down down check up and then here on the last measure you're just gonna go down down all right so that's kind of how you can play the bridge sections if that checking motion is a little bit hard you could always just stick with the double down strum for the whole song it actually sounds pretty good like that as well but something else i wanted to mention really quickly if you are not super familiar with electric guitars you do kind of want to lighten your left hand to make this kind of sound but a lot of this sound is coming from your amp and the presets that you have in your amp as well so i will make sure that i link exactly the preset that i'm using with my spark mini in the description box below but basically you want to find one that has this kind of sound whenever you're muting around with your guitar so if you're not super familiar with different pedals and things like that that can achieve this sound i would definitely recommend finding an amp that has like a attached smartphone app thing where you can kind of just look through other people's presets unless you're somebody who likes to figure that kind of stuff out on your own but anyways i found a pretty good one that sounds a lot like the song so if you're someone who's just wondering how did they make that sound why can't i repeat that sound a lot of it comes from the amp setting so just letting you know so basically the entire song can be played with this double down strum pattern and then in those instrumental portions you can also kind of add in the extra but that's the whole thing this strumming pattern with those five power chords that's all you need to do to play through the entire song like i said it's one of the easier ones that i found when i was learning electric guitar or while i am learning electric guitar and this is the very first song i think that i played through successfully all the way through so um i just wanted to share it with you guys in case you are also starting on an electric journey so with that being said let's go ahead and play through the entire song one two three four one two ready go i'm having trouble trying to sleep i'm counting sheep but running want to have fun jamming out to the rest of this 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 i card right up here all right guys but that does it for my tutorial today i really hope that it 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 tutorials another huge thank you to donner for sponsoring this video if you are interested in the guitar that i was playing on today i will make sure to have that link in the description box down below a special shout out goes out to all of my top patrons over on my patreon page i will have all of their names listed on screen right now and of course a thank you goes out to all of my patrons for supporting my channel and making videos just like this impossible you guys rock 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 of 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 but i think that concludes today's video so thank you so much for watching i really hope that it helped and i will see you in my next one coming out really soon bye you