Clocks by Coldplay Tutorial/Lesson
Clocks
D, Am, Em, Fmaj7, C, Gadd4
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Video transcript
hey everyone it's Ellen here and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Clocks by Cold play on the guitar and today I Am featuring my Orange Wood Brooklyn guitar so if you like what you see I'll make sure to link more information about it down below here's a quick overview of everything I'll be covering in this tutorial today and with that being said let's go ahead and get started all right guys so we only have six different chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our D major which looks like this and sounds like this and by the way if you don't know how to read these chord charts you're sing on screen I Do cover how to do that my free beginner Series right here on YouTube so make sure check that out right here the next chord shape is our a minor we also have our E minor then there's our F major 7 we also have our our C major and then last is our G add four all right and those are the only six chords you need to know to play through this song and really quick I just wanted to mention some advice about Fring shapes for our E minor I am going to be playing this with my middle and ring finger um sometimes I like to play E minor with my pointer and my middle finger but for this particular song I would recommend your middle and your ring finger that will keep you in the same position as a a minor so it'll make it a little bit easier of a transition and then same with our F major 7 to C to G4 I just feel like that's an easy transition cuz you're just moving your ring and your middle finger for all three of those but if you wanted to you could also just play a regular G chord instead of that g add4 um but anyways those are just my advice for the cord shapes but those are the only chords you need to know to play through this Thum so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them cuz it'll make learning the rest of song so much easier for you and if this is a skill you're currently struggling with I do have a practice with me Series right here on YouTube where we practice this skill and build it up in real time together so if you need help with that I will link it in the corner here but once you have these chords under your belt then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would suggest using for this song all right so as I always say if you are brand new to playing guitar or you're somebody who struggles with playing guitar while singing at the same time the first thing I would suggest doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and go through the entire thing with just a single down strum on each chord change as you sing through the song and you want to take this time to really get used to what word or what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look likees go out and I can't be saved tides that I tried to swim against all right that's just a really quick example but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song and just really make sure you know where those chords are going to be changing and this actually something to you do right now if you check out my patreon page I do have this entire guide available to download and print out so I'll make sure to leave that link in the description box if you're interested um but once you have this down we can go ahead and build on this to do more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so I have two different strumming patterns I wanted to show you for this song um but just know that they are very similar the Rhythm and everything is kind of the same but I'll explain a little bit why I like to use both later but let's go ahead and first start with this easier one which is all down strums as you can see on the top here we're counting it with an eighth note count so it's going to sound like this we have 1 and 2 and three and four and 1 and 2 and three and four and 1 and 2 and three and four and down down down down down down down down all right super simple you're just doing all down strums on all of the eighth note counts first of all let's go ahead and take a look at this first verse as you can see we're going from our D to our a minor twice to our E minor so what you want to do is you want to play this pattern through one time per chord so we're starting here on D we have 1 and two and three and four and to a minor a minor is twice to E minor all right that is the chord order for all of the verses but you might already be able to tell that it's kind of sounding a little muddy everything's kind of you know droning together so one way you can easily fix that is to add some accents um so I'm going to go ahead and turn some of these arrows green and these are the strums that I want you to Accent or just just play with a little bit extra emphasis whenever we're strumming them accents are so important in this song cuz it'll really help develop that kind of like driving force throughout the song So as you can see with our accented strum all I'm going to do there is I'm going to have a bigger like motion with my strum so let's go ahead and put our E minor on our accented strums you're going to strum all the strings but our other strums the purple ones where you're not accenting you can kind of just concentrate on just the bottom or the middle strings so you can see the wrist motion there for accented versus non- accented is you know a little bit more Dynamic there so go ahead and just try to Accent the down strums that are green so if we apply that to our pattern we've got d one and 2 and 3 and 4 and to a minor 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and a minor to E minor all right so you can already hear how adding those Accents in is kind of providing a little bit of that drum beat and that's going to help us throughout the song kind of keep track of where we are um so with the Accents in the other thing that I wanted to show you guys which is totally optional but I like to add it into my cover is we're going to add a palm mute as well so with a palm mute all I'm doing is I'm taking the side of my hand with my pick in it and I'm ever so gently laying that on the bridge of my guitar and as you kind of gently lay it on the strings you'll hear how it goes goes from ringing to more muted when you have that Palm mute so if you can and if you like to I would definitely recommend adding the pal mute as well to the verses so let's go ahead and take a look at verse one again with the accent and the pal mute it'll sound like this we've got d 1 and 2 and 3 and four and to a minor to a minor again to E minor all right so you can hear even though I'm adding that pal mute the accent still exists the accents like I said are going to be the most important part of playing this song and having it sound not too muddy all right so let's go ahead and go through verse one I'm going to add the Accents in the palom as well as some lyrics you can hear how it all comes together we've got D A Minor A minor to E minor lights go out and I can't be saved tides that I tried to swim against Ro me down upon my knees oh I beg I beg and please all right so that's how you would do all of the verses now for the choruses or that part where it's more instrumental I do like to use a separate strumming pattern and I'll explain that next so let's go ahead and talk about strumming pattern pattern two all right guys so for strumming pattern two as you can see it's very similar but instead of doing all down strums we're going to alternate between our down and our upstrom so this is just a very straightforward eighth note pattern it's going to sound like this we have 1 and two and three and four and 1 and two and three and four and down up down up down up down up all right not any harder than the first uh pattern in fact you might actually think this is a little little easier um the good thing about these two strumming patterns that I'm showing you is you can use either one throughout the song or you can combine both and that's what I like to do because with the second strumming pattern what I'll do is I'll use it during the choruses or those instrumental Parts where the swell of the song kind of like gets a little bit louder so let's go ahead and take a look at that chorus SL hook there we've got the same chord order we've got D to a minor to E minor um but instead of doing all down strums we're doing down and up so on we have 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 n to a minor a minor again to E minor all right and so with this strumming pattern you still want to have those same accents as in strumming pattern one so let me go ahead and turn some of these green as you can see we've got the same beats accented so it's going to go down up down up down up down up so if you're not used to Accents it can be a little harder to strum that up strum than it is to strum down strums but remember you just want to emphasize it a little okay so if you can accent those green strums then I would definitely continue doing that throughout the song um if you find it easier to access the all downst pattern like I said you could use that for the whole thing um but anyways let's go ahead and take a look at that chorus we're doing the exact same chord order the exact same Rhythm and everything we're just changing our strumming order and we're not adding a pal mute this time we want to let it ring out to kind of mimic how the song swells there so we have D A minor twice E minor oh all right so I would use this second strumming pattern with the ringing throughout all of the choruses or those little instrumental sections as well as the bridge now in the bridge this is where we're going to use our other set of chords so let's go go and take a look at that we're starting here on our F major 7 I like to use struming pattern to for this part so the way we're playing it with our right hand is still exactly the same we've got F major 7 down up down up down up down up twice to C to G4 and nothing else comp oh nothing else compar and nothing else come then we're staying on F major 7 for four measures and then back to D all right and then it's back to that same three chords that we've been playing for the rest of the song um but basically for this second strumming pattern I would recommend using it for all of the choruses all of the instrumental sections as well as the bridge the outro basically anywhere that's not a verse um but yeah those are my suggestions for how to strum this song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get either one of these strumming patterns under your belt or you can do both the way that I like to do um just remember the most important part about either of these patterns is adding those Accents in so make sure you practice that because that'll really help the guitar part kind of Stand by itself and have a little bit of that driving force throughout the song um but once you get these strumming rhythms under your belt there is one last thing I wanted to show you guys which is that little solo tab that you kind of hear throughout the song it's actually pretty simple to play so let's go ahead and talk about that next all right guys so for this little solo tab this is the easiest way I found to play it um so first of all if you don't know how to read the tab that you're seeing at the top of the screen go ahead and check out my how to read tabs video I made a fun little interactive video video that goes through that with you so check that out first and then come back here um but with our left hand I wanted to try to keep it as similar to these you know normal chord shapes as we could but in order to mimic the notes that the piano is playing we do have to change our de chord round a little bit so let's go ahead and start at the beginning of the tab you're going to have your D chord shape on but instead of having your ring finger you're going to move your middle finger to where your ring finger is okay so it's on the third fret of the B string and then your ring finger is going to kind of stretch a little and go up here to the fourth fret again this is relative to the Capo the fourth fret of the D string okay so these are your three notes all right and so for this tab what we're doing is we're just sticking to these three strings with my pick what I'm doing is I'm picking up on two and three and then picking down on four okay so this first little chord section is all right with your pcks up up down up down okay then we move on to our next chord shape and for this on our left hand you can go straight to your a minor chord shape and again your pick your picking and your right hand is going to be the same we've got up up down up up down up down okay and we're almost done from here we're going to go to our E minor chord shape and what you can do here is I actually instead of forming my E minor chord shape from my a minor I just let go of all the strings except for my middle finger because again we're just sticking on our second third and fourth strings okay so you really don't need to fret this other fifth string um but anyways the pick is going to be the same we have up up down up up down up down and then from here you would go back to that kind of like alternate D chord shape and what I like to do is because my middle finger is already here I like to kind of slide it up a fret and then your ring finger is going to land on the Fret above it so it's just kind of a helpful like transition tip if you're anything like me it can be a little bit more difficult to get back to that alternative like d chord shape because it's not a normal you know open cord so again I like to just take my middle finger slide it up a fret put my ring finger down and then from there go back to where the other two fingers go okay so the whole tab sounds like this and I'm just now realizing I think when we went over the a minor shape I only went through it once but you would want to repeat that twice just like in our chord order okay all right and then when you get to the end you would just basically start back at the beginning again and that kind of goes throughout the song it's definitely like in the intro as well as like those chorus Like Instrumental sections but if you had like a friend to play with or you were like using a Luber pedal or something you could totally like have this playing throughout the song it sounds pretty good um but yeah that is the tab for how to play that little solo line all right guys so one last time go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this solo line under your belt um it's totally optional if you didn't want to add that into your cover you could totally just strum through the whole thing but I do think it's kind of fun to add these little embellishments sometimes so go ahead and take as much time as you need to get that under your fingertips but once you're ready we can go ahead and put everything we've learned in this tutorial together the chords those transitions the strumming that little tab if you want to we can put it all together to play through the song one two ready go Want to Have Fun jamming 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 FastTrack and playong guitar tutorials I'll leave a link for that in the description box down below if you enjoyed learning this song with me then you should definitely check out this video not only does it have a super similar Vibe and feel but it's just as fun and easy to play so see you over there bye but