Circles by Post Malone Tutorial/Lesson
Circles
C, Cmaj7, F, Fm
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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 circles by post Fallone on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to watch so this song is actually not too hard to play there's only four chords for the entire song unfortunately two of them are bar chords however I will show you alternative fingerings that you can use if Barre chords are something that you are currently struggling with but beyond that there's only four chords like I said only two strumming patterns for the whole song and no capo required to have it in the original key so with that being said let's go ahead and jump into what those chords look like all right so let's go ahead and go through what these chords look like like I said there's only four so we're gonna start with our C chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got our C major seven chord and all you want to do for that one is take this first finger off so you just have your ring finger and your middle finger on and everything else will stay the same this is our C major seven chord and it sounds like this so easy transition between our next chord is our F chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then our last chord you want to know is your f minor chord and all you want to do for that is take off your middle finger okay so now you've still got your first finger barred and your ring and pinky are still there so F mate F minor looks like this and sounds like this and those are all the chords you need to know but like I said earlier if Barre chords are a little hard for you and this F chord is a little bit hard you can also play F major seventh which looks like this and sounds like this so if you want to use this F major seven chord in place of your F your regular F chord you can throughout this song the only reason I like to do the Barre chord F is because for me it's a lot easier to transition from this F to this F minor just by taking off my middle finger instead of going from this F major seven to F minor but it's up to you whichever one you think is easier so these are your chord options again if you want to use that F major seven that can be in place of any F that you see in this song alright so go ahead and take a minute right here to pause the video and practice those chords and make sure that you have them memorized so it's easier for you to transition between them and then once you have that down let's go ahead and jump into these strumming patterns that you can use with this song all right so the first strumming pattern is actually going to be a practice pattern for anyone who's a beginner out there I always suggest that this is how you start out so that you can kind of get used to where those chord transitions are going to be throughout the song that way when you get used to the one down strum pattern that I'm about to show you it'll be a lot easier to transition into some of those more complicated patterns so let's go ahead and put our a C major seven chord down since that's the first chord in the song and all you want to do for this first pattern is go through the entire song and just do one down strum every time you see a chord change just so you know where it's going to be so you know what word you're singing at that point and just so you're familiar with this song so let me go ahead and show you an example of what this would sound like by going through the chorus so again I have my C major seven chord on we're just gonna strum it down once then we go to our escort and then our F minor chord all right so super simple you're just gonna take that through and kind of sing through the word so you know where you're going to be doing those changes Oh Dadu I'm waiting on you take the plane go all right so super-easy again if you want to do that for the entire song I would totally suggest it just so you can kind of get more familiar with it but it'll be the same for all of the verses in the bridge and everything you're just gonna do one down strum on each of those chord changes but once you get that down let's go ahead and jump into our first real strumming pattern so here it is as you can see it's just down down up up down up up down up so I know that it's actually quite long but it's very intuitive and it sounds just like the rhythm of the song so go ahead and put your C major seven chord back on and I'm going to take you through this pattern once so we've got so you can see what I'm doing between all of those transitions when you're going from an upstroke back to an up stroke or a down stroke back to a down stroke all you want to do is kind of circle your hand around so that you're in the right position so we've got now then you circle your hand all right if you're new to the guitar this can be a little bit it can take a little time to get used to but once you get that rhythm internalize it becomes a lot easier so let's go ahead and slow that down and do that pattern one more time we've got our C major 7 chord on now all right so go ahead like I said and pause this video now if you want to practice this strumming pattern a little bit longer at this speed but I'm going to go ahead and speed it up so that we can get it at tempo again nothing is changing with the pattern we're just kind of speeding up the pace that we're playing it at so go ahead and put that C major seven chord back on and we're going to play it a little bit faster one two three four all right so if you are able to play it at that speed then now we can go ahead and add in some of those chord transitions and that'll be the last thing we need to do before we can go ahead and play the song so again we're starting with our C major seven chord on we're doing this strumming pattern through once so we've got and then here before we start the pattern over again you're going to go ahead and go to the next chord which is our F chord so go and put your F chord down and then it's the exact same pattern all right so go ahead and do that transition with me we've got our C major seven all right so once you have that C major seven to that F chord transition down that's probably the hardest transition throughout this song so now what we want to do is go from our F major chord to our F minor chord and the way we're going to do this is we're actually going to take this pattern and split it kind of in half and so we're going to play F for the beginning half and then F minor for the end so with our F chord on go ahead and put your F chord on we're gonna go and then right here before you do this up and then this last little triplet you want to take off your middle finger to make that fat F minor chord and finish it out all right it's a very minor transition between F Minor give that same kind of chord progression as the song that sounds really cool so let's go ahead and try that part again we've got F major that's mightor all right so let's do that again all right this transition shouldn't be as hard as the other one because all you're doing is lifting that middle finger off to make that an F minor chord alright so let's try that again we've got all right so once you have that down let's go ahead and add that C major seven back into the beginning and play through this whole little section so we've got C major seven so when you switch between the F major and the F minor chord it can kind of depend on where you're more comfortable with switching those chords within this pattern so I found that when I played through it some of the times I would play through it with the F minor just in this last little triplet with this last F so it would go from F major and then I go to F minor but then other times during this song I noticed that I would actually change to the F minor chord a little bit earlier so it would go and then I would switch to F minor so it's kind of up to you I feel like in the song it changes about that time in the second pattern so whichever one you are more comfortable with switching but just make sure you switch from the F major to the F minor sometime within that pattern so we've got or if you want to switch it a little later you can switch it for that last triplet so we've got so it's really up to you whichever one you feel more comfortable with and comes a little bit more naturally to you is probably the way that I would go but you'll see in my cover that I kind of switch back and forth between both I think it's just what I'm feeling in the moment while I'm playing it so I'm just showing you both ways that you can change between the F major and the F minor and then you can choose which one you prefer so if you are able to follow along with that little section there then you're pretty much good to go because that chord progression does repeat itself quite often throughout this song and so once you can do that transition you're pretty much set to go but before we move on to the cover portion at the end I did want to teach you one more strumming pattern that I will be using in my cover and again you can feel free to use just this one strumming pattern throughout the entire song but if you want to also incorporate another strumming pattern to kind of change things up and make the guitar sound a little bit more interesting then let's go ahead and look at our second strumming pattern so here it is and all you can see is it's just all down strums and so it sounds kind of boring but the way that we're going to make this sound more interesting is we're going to emphasize every other down strum and we're also going to add a palm mute so what I'm doing with my palm mute is I'm just taking my playing hand the one that has my pick in it and I'm taking the side of my hand and just kind of resting it against these strings right here in between the sound hole and the bridge and I'm just going to gently lay it there while I play these chords so you got our C major seven without a palm mute it rings a lot but when I add that palm mute and just kind of gently lay my palm there it definitely needs all of those strings it doesn't sound that great right now but when you add it into a pattern it kind of gives it more of a rhythmic feel which I think matches the song during the verses so let me go ahead and show you how how I will be using this pattern in my cover all right so like I said I like to use this during the verses so I'm gonna go and put my C chord on since that's the first chord in the verse and all we're gonna do is we're going to use our palm mute and we're just going to strum C down eight times so we've got one two three four five six seven eight all right if you don't want to add the palm mute you can still totally do this pattern it just won't sound as rhythmic it'll be a little bit more ringing but you can still do it so just be eight down strums without the palm you all right but since I like the way that it sounds more rhythmically I'm going to add my palm mute in so again we've just got this pattern and it's just eight down strums one two three four five six seven eight all right and so for the first all you want to do is double up on this pattern so you're gonna play it through twice for each chord change so we've got our C chord 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 again 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 then you go to your next chord which is our F and it's the same exact pattern 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 again 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and then it's pretty much that whole pattern through for the entire verse so right now it doesn't really sound like the song because it is quite slow so in order to have it sound like the original we want to speed it up a little bit so go ahead and put that C chord back on and you know choose your palm mute or you don't have to do it and we're gonna go ahead and speed this up again if you're not ready to speed up then go ahead and pause the video and practice it at this tempo and then slowly try to see if you can get those down strums a little bit faster but I'm going to go ahead and show you what this is going to sound like at the original tempo so I've got my C chord on I've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 right and twice XE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 twice all right and that's the whole pattern for this second pattern what you're hearing when I'm playing it through is that I'm emphasizing certain beats and so it's kind of giving it more of a rhythmic feel and so the ones that you'll see that I'm doing right now are every other one so it'd be the first third fifth and seventh down strum so it'd be one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight and how I'm accomplishing that rhythm is just I'm adding a palm mute still for all of the beats but what I'm doing is on the first third fifth and seventh I'm kind of just like giving it a little bit more energy when I'm strumming down with my right hand so in turn what that does is on those beats it kind of emphasizes it so we've got one two three four five six seven eight all right so you'll see in my cover I'm going to try to kind of incorporate that rhythm where we're emphasizing every other down strum just so it can give it a little bit more of that driving rhythmic feel but let me go ahead and show you what that sounds like in the first so go ahead and put your C chord on and we'll go through what this sounds like so when I do my cover I like to use that pattern for the beginning of the first before then the end of the verse I actually like to go back to the first strumming pattern so that down down up down up up down up up down up strumming pattern the only difference is that I'm going to add a palm mute to that pattern so the pattern is still exactly the same as we went through earlier I'm just adding a palm mute so we've got down again if you find palm-muting hard then you can just go back to the first strumming pattern or if you want to you can still continue doing this strumming pattern for the entire verse I just think that it sounds a little bit more fun and a little bit more accurate if you do the all down strum pattern for the beginning of the first but then go back to the down up down strumming pattern for the second half of the verse so let me go ahead and go through the whole first for you so you can hear what I'm talking about we've got my C chord on and I'm starting with strumming pattern two down till we were I'll be the bad guy now but no one and then right here is where I switch back to the first drawing pattern but add a palm mute into we do this every day and then you would go into the chorus which we practiced earlier with strumming pattern 1 so once you have all this under your belt and you have those chords memorized you have the transitions down and you can do all of these strumming patterns or you can do one or the other let's go ahead and put all of those elements together so that we can play through the whole song it was this is circles by Postville own good luck we could I'll be the back we do this every time daddy was special let it go understand sheekha tell me one I do let it go again don't take the plane Bauer go run away all right and that is my tutorial for circles by post Malone I hope you guys liked it thank you so much for watching this video if you did like it and you found it helpful please make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to leave a comment for any other song that you might want to see in the future also be sure to hit that subscribe button that way you guys know every single time I upload a new video for you guys here are my social media handles in case you want to follow me on any of those that's just what I do a lot of like sneak peeks and giveaways and pulls and little fun things like that and then one last little plug is if you like the shirt that I'm wearing today in my video this is my love guitar forever shirt so that is available in my official merch store which you can find linked down below underneath this video there should be some merchandise there or you can go to my youtube channel page and it'll be linked to there as well those are just different ways you can support me in my channel so that I can continue making these tutorials for you guys but like I said thank you guys so much for watching I hope this helped and I will see you in my next video you