Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol Tutorial/Lesson
Chasing Cars
A, Esus4, Dmaj7
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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 chasing cars by snow patrol on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you like to learn all right guys and really quick i just wanted to point out that i will be playing this on my electric today and i will link the amp settings down here however if all you have is an acoustic you can follow this tutorial all the way through exactly as it is and it'll be exactly the same for acoustic as well but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the overview anything all right so for all of my beginners out there this one's for you this is one of the easiest songs that i have on my channel so basically for your guitar you will want it in standard tuning and we don't need a capo to play this in the original key on top of that i only have three chords to show you that can apply for the entire song and one strumming pattern that also works for the entire song of course there is that like very recognizable picking and i promise you guys this is one of the easiest picking patterns you can do you only need one finger so um yeah let's go ahead and jump into everything you need to know and we'll start with the chords how i feel all right guys so i've zoomed in a little bit to take a closer look at these chords like i said there are only three to play through the entire song and the first one you're going to need to know is your a chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our e suspended 4 which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is our d major 7 which looks like this and sounds like this all right and something you may have already noticed is one of the reasons this is so beginner friendly is because your chord shape is going to be the same so if you're using your three fingers like this we've got our a chord our e suspended four and our d major seven so since you don't have to change your fingers around it should be pretty easy to transition between those three chords and uh just to mention here you might have seen other tutorials use other different chords as well but i wanted to teach you guys this way because it sounds really cool and pretty accurate and it also is really easy to play alright guys so go ahead and take a few moments to pause the video and practice those three chord shapes get them memorized practice transitioning between them and then once you can do that pretty smoothly we can move into our strumming so if you're familiar with my other tutorials you'll know that i normally start you guys out with a practice pattern which is just one single down strum for every chord change so that you can kind of get used to the song however because this song is really pretty simplistic i wanted to go ahead and just jump into the actual strumming pattern that you can use for the song and as you can see it's just eight down strums and what we're gonna do is play this pattern through two times for every single chord okay so starting on our a chord we would just go one two three four five six seven eight and then again one two three four five six seven eight then you go to your next chord you suspended four one two three four five six seven eight again two three four five six seven eight then you go to do your d major seven same thing one two three four five six seven eight again two three four five six seven eight and then back to your a chord one two three four five six seven eight twice two three four five six seven eight and that is the strumming pattern you could use that for the entire song i kid you not it's so simple the one thing you will have to do though is speed it up a little bit so at tempo it's gonna sound a little more like this one two three four five six seven eight twice two three four five six seven eight next core twice d major back to a all right and then one last thing you can do to add in if you want to dress it up a little bit is just accent certain um of these down strums so i'm gonna accent the first the fourth and the seventh down strum and what i mean by that is i'm basically just strumming with a little bit extra like passion in those and so what you'll notice is that if you kind of emphasize those underlined beats here you'll hear kind of more of a rhythmic feel to it so it'll be like one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven and that's the whole thing repeat for the song all right and like i said you can repeat the same strumming pattern for the entire song and it sounds really great really similar to the original song however there is that kind of like picking that you can hear mostly in the verses and in the intro and stuff like that and you guys this is the easiest faking pattern i've ever seen in my life so let me zoom in so i can show you how to play it all right guys so i've gone ahead and zoomed in a little bit so we can take a closer look at this picking pattern and i kid you not this is one of the easiest picking patterns that you will ever learn you only need one finger to play through the whole thing so let's go ahead and get started so go ahead and put your finger on the second fret of the g string now you can either use your middle finger here or your first finger and i'll kind of show you two different like ways to do it but i'm going to go ahead and use my middle finger and what we're going to do is we're going to pick the g string with your thumb on your right hand and then we're gonna pick the high e string with our index finger now you can also use a pick if you have one and you would just you know pick the strings but for me i prefer the tone for this song with my fingers so i'm going to be using my thumb and my index finger to play this but basically if you can hear it that's already the beginning of our picking pattern all we're going to do is go back and forth between our thumb and our index finger with your middle finger on your second fret of your g string um i think eight times one two three four five six seven eight all right and so that's the beginning part then next you want to either take your middle finger here on your fretting hand and slide it down to the first fret of the g string or if you want to use your middle finger you can just lift that off and replace it with your index finger either way will work but basically you just want a finger here on the first fret of the g string and then we're gonna do that eight count again one two three four five six seven eight all right and then let's just keep on going because you're almost done already if you can believe it next we're gonna just take our thumb on our picking hand and go to our d string okay there's not going to be any fingers fretting the d string it's just going to be open and then you're still going to pick the high e string all right so we've got two open strings here so if you wanted to you could take your left hand completely off and we're going to do eight counts one two three four five six seven eight and then you wanna end with your uh middle finger or first finger or whatever finger you wanna use on the second fret of the g string and we're gonna do eight counts one two three four five six seven eight and that is the whole picking pattern you can repeat that for the entire song if you wanted to so let's play it through at tempo all together we've got one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight open two three four five six seven eight back to the beginning and you can do it for the whole song everything on our own all right and like i said you could use that for the entire song however what i like to do is go back and forth between my picking on the verses to the strumming pattern on my choruses if i lay here if i just lay here all right so kind of you can make the decision on your own if you prefer picking you could use that for the whole song if you prefer strumming you could use that for the whole song but regardless let's go ahead and put everything together to play through the whole song if i lay here everything on our own want to have fun jamming out to the rest of the 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 link it down in the description box below as well as in this icard up here alright guys but that does it for me today in this tutorial 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 a huge thank you and shout out to my top patrons over on my patreon page for making videos just like this one possible and 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 learn next and i'll even do giveaways on there a few times a year so make sure to check it out but yeah that ends this video so thank you so much for watching i really hope it helped and i will see you in my next one bye you