Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison Tutorial/Lesson
Brown Eyed Girl
G, C, D, Em, D7
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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 brown eyed girl by Van Morrison on the guitar so stay tuned that this is something that you want to learn so this song is gonna be super super beginner-friendly I have my guitar in standard tuning and you do not need a capo to play this in the original key on top of that we only need to know four chords there is a fifth chord but it's optional you don't need to know it and I'll go into more detail of that when we get into the chords section and on top of that you only need to know one strumming pattern so let's go ahead and jump into an overview of what I'm going to be teaching you in this tutorial so like I said to play this song you only need to know four chords and those are G C D and E minor now there is an optional chord you can play d7 as well in some parts of the song but it's completely optional if you don't know what a d7 chord looks like I am gonna show that to you in the chord section but if you don't want to learn any new chords you don't want to learn that d7 chord you can always replace the d7 in this song with just a regular D okay so if you are familiar with all of these chords and that's perfect but if you do want me to break them down for you a little bit more give you a little refresher then make sure to skip to this time here where I will show you how to play those chords and then after that we're gonna jump into our strumming pattern so before we get into the strumming pattern I always like to start with a practice pattern I always suggest if you're a beginner at guitar that this is a really good thing to do because it gets you used to the song and all that's gonna be is one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change and you're gonna want to take that through the entire song just so you know where those chord transitions are going to be now if this is something you think that you don't need to do that's totally fine we can skip it but if you do want to get an example of what it sounds like within the song and you want me to kind of go through a run-through with you make sure to skip to this time here where I will go through the practice pattern and give you an example within the song itself from there we're gonna jump into our strumming pattern and the strumming pattern we're gonna use for this entire song as you can see is a simple down up up down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this alright and you're just gonna want to play that through one time for each chord throughout the song so if you feel like you already got the rhythm for that and that's perfect and great but if you do want me to break it down for you a little bit more go through some examples go a little bit slower then make sure to skip to this time where I'm gonna go over the strumming pattern with you and do a little bit of practice and things like that once we get all of this stuff down and you've got those chords memorized and you've got that strumming pattern down then what we're gonna do is go through the entire song and play it together so if that's something you think you can do right now after this overview go ahead and skip to the playthrough here at the end where I will have the lyrics and chords and everything that you need to know on screen in front of you so you can play through the whole song but if you did want to break things down a little bit more then let's go ahead and get into the more in-depth part of this tutorial and let's start with a chord all right so let's take a closer look at these chords like I said there are only four that you need to know and the first one is G which looks like this and sounds like this after that you need to know see which looks like this and sounds like this the next chord you need to know after that is our D chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then that last chord you need to know is our E minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then like I said at the beginning we do have one optional cord that's our d7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this now remember though if you're not familiar with this cord you do not have to know how to play it anytime I use this d7 chord in this tutorial you can just replace that with your regular D chord alright but those are the only chords you need to know for this song alright so once you have those chords and memorized go ahead and take some time to make sure that you can transition between them because it will really help with the strumming pattern if you're more used to being able to switch between your chords if that is something that you're struggling with right now I do have a TMT that you can follow where I do exercises and give you tips and tricks and stuff on how to transition between chords faster but once you have practiced those transitions and you're pretty comfortable with them let's go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern that you can use for this song so like I said at the beginning if you are brand-new to guitar the first thing I always suggest is to start out with what I call a practice pattern which is just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change this is really going to help you get more familiar with the song so that when we step up our strumming pattern game and make it a little bit more challenging you'll be more used to where those transitions are going to be so let me go ahead and give you an example of what this would sound like if you put your G chord on that's the very first chord in the song and what we're gonna do is just strum it down once then you go to your next chord which is C and strum that down once back to G strum down once and then go 2d and strum down once all right and you kind of just want to take this pattern through the entire song and just make sure you can transition at that speed and you know what words you're gonna be transitioning on and things like that so let's go ahead and go through the first verse as an example again I've got my G chord on we're just doing one simple down strum for every chord change hey where did we days when the ring down in the hollow all right so basically I want you to just take this same pattern through and apply it to the whole song until you're comfortable with where all of those chord transitions are gonna be and then once you've done that let's go ahead and go into the strumming pattern that I actually like to use for this song all right so now let's jump into the strumming pattern that you can use for this song as you can see it's down down up up down up and the beautiful thing about this strumming pattern is that you can use it for the entire song so what we're gonna do is play this pattern through one time for every chord change so let's go ahead and just go through the motions first so I have my g chord on again cuz it's the first chord of the song let's go ahead and go through the motion so we've got our down strum and then you want to circle your hand back around do another down strum and then up and then you want to circle your hand back down and then go up all right so if you're a beginner at guitar sometimes this can be a little bit challenging remembering to circle your hand back around instead of just playing it straight up and down so just remember there's a few places here where you're gonna have to circle your hand around so we've got down circle down up circle up down all right so perfect once you have those emotions down let's go ahead and put it in rhythm so you can hear what it sounds like in rhythm so let me play it for you first you can hear it one and two and three and four and down down down up up down down down up up down up all right so why don't you guys go ahead and put your G chord on and try that with me one and two and three and four and up down down down up down up up all right how was that hopefully you were able to get it if you were not able to get it at that speed no worries just make sure to pause the video and practice a little bit slower until you're used to those hand motions and then slowly speed it up until you can get it at tempo which is what we just did it at but after you get it at tempo now all you have to do is add in those core transitions so remember we're playing this pattern through once for every chord change so let's go ahead and put the core transitions on screen for you guys and now let's practice going between the chords alright so we started out with our G and we're gonna do the whole pattern once down down up up down up then you switch your next chord which is C same thing down down up up down up switch back to G down down up up down up and then we go to D down down up up down all right so let's practice that all together without stopping one and two and three and four and again down up down up down down up up gee one more time chain back to G you got it down in the car all right good job so you can see already with just the simple chord progression and that one strumming pattern you can already play through most of the song so like I said this strumming pattern is going to apply for the rest of the song you're gonna play through one time for every chord change in my cover here at the end I am gonna go a little bit faster than we just practiced it but if you could get it at the tempo that we just practiced you can definitely get it a little bit faster as well so yeah now that you have the chords memorized you've practiced transitioning between them and you've gotten this strumming pattern down let's go ahead and put everything that we've learned together so that we can play through the whole song this is brown-eyed girl by Van Morrison good luck you're my cat's mind we so that was my tutorial for brown eyed girl by Van Morrison I really hope that it helped you if it did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to subscribe to my channel that way you know every single time I post a new video if you are interested in learning and any other songs that I haven't done on my channel yet make sure to also comment that song down below so that I can see your requests 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 and poles and things like that this is also where I go to find someone to feature in my new segment forever features this week we have Marie Tula playing blinding lights by the weekend let's give it a listen so if you want to be featured in my next tutorial make sure to follow me on instagram and post a short cover of you playing any song that you've learned from any of my tutorials on my channel use that hashtag forever feature so that I can find it and the next feature spot could be you one last little plug if you liked the shirt I was wearing in today's tutorial this is my forever faithful guitar shirt on my new womens slouchy tee cut so if you like this design or would like to see any of the others that I have in my store make sure to look down below in the description box or also under this video and all of my merch will be linked down below every purchase that really helps to build up my channel and allows me to continue making these free tutorials for you guys so thank you so much for anyone who's ever supported me in that way but yeah that concludes this tutorial I really hope that it helped and I will see you in my next video bye