cardigan by Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
cardigan
Em, A, G, D, Bm
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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 a cardigan 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 smile black lipstick so this song is going to be not too bad if you're a beginner make sure if you want to play it in the same key as taylor swift you have your guitar in standard tuning and go ahead and put your capo on the first fret if you don't have a capo it's totally fine you can play this song without one it'll just be a half step lower on top of that we only need to know five chords to play through the whole song unfortunately one of them is a barre chord which is our b minor chord but no worries there i will be showing you guys an alternate fingering where you don't have to borrow any chords and as well as just one strumming pattern for the entire song so let's go ahead and jump into an overview of what i'll be teaching you in this tutorial all right so like i said you only need to know five chords to play through this song and those are e minor a g d and b minor now remember like i said that b minor is going to be our bar chord but i will show you an alternate fingering for how you can play that without barring so if you're interested in seeing that or want a refresher on any of these other chords make sure to go ahead and skip to this time here where i will show you how to play those chords however if you are familiar with them and you feel like you don't need to review that then we can move on to our strumming patterns that i like to use for this song now the first strumming pattern i'm going to show you is a practice pattern so i don't actually use it in the song but as you can see it's just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change this is in here because if you are a beginner to guitar i always suggest that this is something you should do where you go through the song and just play the one down strum for every chord change it's really gonna help you get familiar with the song and it'll help later down the line with harder strumming patterns and being able to sing at the same time and things like that so if you want to go over an example of what this would sound like within the song and have me walk through it with you go ahead and skip to this time here where i will you know break down how to use this practice pattern however if you feel like you don't need to do that then we can move on to the strumming pattern that i do like to use in this song so the strumming pattern i like to use with this song and my cover is down down up up down up and it's going to sound a little something like this so this strumming pattern is not too hard and it's really versatile because we're going to be able to put a palm mute on it and that'll make it sound a little bit different for different parts of the song but anyways i will go through all of that in my strumming sections so if you want to break this pattern down a little bit more and have me explain to you how we would play this in the song make sure to skip to this time here for how to play that strumming pattern however if you feel like you already got it just by listening to me play it and feel like you have the rhythm then you can always skip to the play through at the end of this video that's where i'll have all the chords and lyrics and everything you need to know to play the song on screen in front of you and you can play it together with me um 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 cork all right so let's go ahead and take a closer look at these chords like i said there's only five to play the whole song and we're going to start with our e minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we're going to jump into our a chord which looks like this and sounds like this next we have our g chord which looks like this and sounds like this then we have d which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is our bar chord which is our b minor chord and that looks like this and sounds like this and then of course as promised if bar chords are hard for you an alternate fingering would be just to put your first finger on just that top fret there and then this would be our alternate fingering for b minor and it looks like this and sounds like this all right and those are the only chords you need to know to play this song all right so after you have those chords memorized go ahead and take a few moments to make sure you can transition between them if that's something you're struggling with i do have a tmt on how to transition between chords faster so make sure to check that out if that's something that you need help with but after that let's go ahead and move on to the strumming patterns you can use with this song so if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials you know that i always start with the practice pattern which is just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change like i said at the beginning this is really great if you're a beginner and only have a little bit of experience with guitar so let's go ahead and go through what this would look like if you put your e minor chord on that's the very first chord in the song and all we're going to do is strum one down strum for each of these chords in this progression so we're starting with our e minor chord strum down once then a then g and then a so basically what i want you to do is take this one down strum pattern and go through the whole song and just get really familiar with what word you're singing and things like that when those chords are going to be changing so let me go ahead and take you through the first verse to give you an idea we've got e minor vintage t brand new a high heels on cobble g when you are young they assume you know a so basically just one down strum on the beat for all of the chords in the song one little thing i did want to kind of throw in here is i will be talking through the verses in this song because taylor's singing it pretty low it's really hard for my voice to get that low so i will be talking through most of the song but yeah so this is how you would use this one practice strumming pattern go ahead and take it through the whole song until you're familiar and then after you've done that we can jump into the strumming pattern i actually do like to use in my cover all right so our strumming pattern for this song as you can see is down down up up down up and we're gonna play through this twice for every chord change okay so um before we do the rhythm and stuff like that let's go ahead and just go through the motion so i have my e minor chord on because again that's the first chord in the song and let's just practice the motions we've got down up circle up down up and when i say circle that's just for anyone who's a beginner out there it can be hard to remember instead of just strumming straight up and down to circle your hand around for down followed by down strums or up followed by up strums so there's going to be a few places in this pattern where you got to circle your hand around so that's just to have you be aware of that so we've got down circle down up circle up down up all right so once you have the motions down what we can do now is play in rhythm so you can hear what the pattern sounds like in rhythm so let me go ahead and show you one time how it goes one two three all right and that actually is at the tempo that we're gonna play it at in the cover so why don't you go ahead and put your e minor chord on and try this rhythm with me i'll count us in one two three and four and down down up up down up down down up so hopefully you were able to hear the rhythm and keep up with it if not no worries just pause the video and practice this a little bit slower at your own tempo until you can speed it up to this tempo but once you have it at this tempo all you have to do now is put in those core transitions so let me go ahead and put that on screen for you guys as you can see we're going from e minor to a to g to a so what we're going to do is play through this pattern two times for each of these chords okay so let's go ahead and go through this together once i have my e minor chord on to start we've got down down up up down up twice then you switch to a same thing down up down up twice then we've got g awesome so once you got the transition and you know you're going to be playing through this twice for each chord now all you want to do is practice stringing all of those together without stopping so let's go ahead and try that once i'll count us in one two three four e minor you got when you are young they assume you know nothing awesome so um that can be applied for the entire song i think that this is a perfect strumming pattern for you to apply for the whole song however there is one thing i wanted to show you that is kind of cool that you can do to dress it up a little bit and that is adding a palm mute so what i'm doing there is i'm just taking my right hand the hand with my pick and i'm taking the side of my hand here and just really gently resting it on my guitar strings in between where the sound hole is and the bridge and what that's going to do is whenever you strum it's going to kind of dull the ringing of the strings and that's going to kind of mute it and make it sound a little more rhythmic so let me go ahead and play through this again with a palm mute on to show you what it sounds like all right so hopefully you could hear the difference between when we're letting it ring versus when we're adding a palm mute um if that's something that you want to practice and put in your cover i would suggest it because it does kind of break up the guitar part of the song makes it a little bit more interesting and the way that i like to use it is i will put the palm mute on for all of the verses and then when i get to the choruses i'll let that ring without the palm you need so it's just a little tip for me to you if you want to do it the way that i'm going to do it in my cover here at the end however if you are not comfortable with palm muting or that's not something that you like the sound of you could totally just use this strumming pattern and play it with the ringing sound for the whole song and that'll sound great too all right but after you have that strumming pattern down you are ready to play through the whole song so make sure you have those chords memorized you can transition between them and you've gotten this strumming pattern down and you've added in that palm mute if you want to what we can do now is take all of the things we learned in this video and put them together to play through the whole song again i will have the lyrics and chords and everything that you need to know on screen in front of you and just a fair warning remember this song is pretty low for me so i'm going to be talking through a lot of it but yeah let's go ahead and jump into the play through so you can hear how all of this goes together is a friend tonight chase two girls lose the one when you are young they assume you know nothing this is cardigan by taylor swift good luck vintage tea brand new phone high heels on cobblestones smile black lipstick sensual politics when you are young they assume you know nothing i knew i was is a friend tonight chase two girls lose the one when you are young they assume you know nothing i is around my sky the ending is shadows me you put me all right so that was my tutorial for how to play cardigan by taylor swift off her new folklore album i really hope that 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 what you want to see next and this is also where i go to find someone to feature in my new segment forever features this week we have ayer and his daughter clara from chicago performing don't start now by doo alipa let's give it a listen with somebody if you wanna believe that anything could stop me don't show up don't come out don't start caring about me so if you want to be featured in a future 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 the tutorials on my channel use that hashtag forever features in the description 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 cords shirt which you can find this and a lot of other designs in my merch store link down below as well as under this video every purchase there really helps my channel to grow and allows me to continue making these free tutorials for you guys so thank you so much to anyone who's ever supported me in that way but i think that ends this video so thank you guys again so much for watching i hope this helped and i will see you in my next one bye you