Come As You Are by Nirvana Tutorial/Lesson
Come As You Are
Em, D, E, G, A, C
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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 Come As You Are by Nirvana on the guitar huge shout out and thank you to my patrons for voting on this song as this month's feature picks and here's a quick overview of everything I'll be covering in this tutorial today and with all of that being said let's go ahead and get started alright guys so you only need to know six chord shapes to place of this song and we're going to start with our E minor 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 seeing on screen I Do cover how to do that in my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out the next chord shape is our D major we have our e major we also have our G major a major and then lastly is our C major chord foreign and those are the only chord shapes you need to know to play through this song so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them because it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier and if you are someone who's currently struggling with transitioning between your chord shapes fast enough I would suggest checking out my practice with me Series where we go through that skill in real time together but once you have all of that down let's go ahead and talk about the strumming alright guys so I always start out with a practice pattern and this is good for people who are new to guitar or people who struggle with singing and playing at the same time and all you want to do is bring up this song and we're going to play through it with one single down strum on every chord change as you sing to the song so you get used to where those chord changes are going to take place so here's a quick example of what that would look like as you were as I want you to be right and you just basically do that for the entire song and just take a mental note of what word you're singing whenever those chords are changing this is actually something 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 will make sure to leave that link in the description box down below alright guys so the full strumming pattern I would suggest for this song is not too hard as you can see it's just down down up up down up so let's go ahead and zoom in to talk a little bit more about this Rhythm alright guys so we are going to be in an eighth note rhythm today so it's just going to count like this we have one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down down up up down down up up down up all right and basically what you want to do is apply this strumming pattern one time through for every chord throughout the song So if we go ahead and bring up verse one you can see we're going back and forth between E minor and D so we just have our E minor chord on we have down just go back and forth like that E minor is all right and this strumming pattern is so great because you can apply it for the entire song so let's go ahead and take a look at that bridge now we're just switching chords from D to E minor to e to G but it's the same strumming pattern so we have e down up up down up G down up for all of the bridges right and of course this goes for the courses as well now our chords are our a chord and our c chord so again one time through for each chord we have a down up down up back and forth I don't ever die so that is the strumming pattern that I would suggest for this song all right guys so again pause the video and take as much time as you need to practice the strumming pattern and really internalize that Rhythm it'll make singing through the song with it a lot easier if you do that but let's go ahead and jump into some of these tabs but wait really quick is this video helpful so far if it is please make sure to give me a thumbs up as well as leave a comment down below to help me reach more people in YouTube's recommendations it only takes a second of your time but it makes such a huge difference for my channel so thank you so much and let's get on with it alright guys so this first tab I want to show you is kind of like that riff tab that you can hear throughout the song but very clearly in the intro it's really quite easy to play so first of all if you don't know how to read guitar tabs I would suggest checking out this video I made a fun little interactive video that teaches you the basics of how to read guitar tabs so check that out first and then come back here but basically all we want to do is we're starting on our D string and you're just going to pick that open then use your index finger to do the first fret on the D string and then your middle finger for the second fret on the D string so you can hear we're kind of doing a walk from there you're going to go next door to your open G string and pick that once and then your middle finger should still be down on the D string so you go back to D string back to G back to D all right so you can see we're going back and forth there so if you add the walk you go all right from here we're almost done now you want to go back to your index finger on the D string and then open so you can see there we're kind of doing a walk down all right and now this time on the G string next door you want to put your middle finger on that second fret and then go back to your D string and you're doing that twice on open and then back to the G string okay so starting from that walk down right and from there it sounds a little unfinished because what you want to do is go back to the beginning of the tab and just start it over so the tab all together sounds like this all right so that's one time through if you were to repeat that back to back it would sound like the song all right and this plays basically for the intro for sure throughout the verses kind of throughout the entire song except for the bridges and the choruses so basically if you have a friend or something one of you guys could play this riff the other one could do the strumming with the chords and I think it sounds really good all together but there is another tab that I wanted to show you guys which is that solo tab you hear kind of in the middle of the song This one is also really easy to play so if you look at the tab at the top of the screen we're just using our top two strings our B string and our E string so you're going to start with your open B string and pick that once then use your ring finger to go on the third fret of that b string and then next door to that high E string you're going to pick that open and then back to the open B string and you do that twice so we have and then here the end you're going to go back to your ring finger on the B string and then open e now take your middle finger and put that on the second fret of the high E string and then back to open and then back to third fret B okay and again this tab ends right there because you would just go back to the beginning of the tab and repeat it so the whole solo tab sounds like this all right and that goes right in the middle of the song when they are doing the solo alright guys so again pause the video and take as much time as you need to really look over these tabs and get used to picking one string at a time this can be new for a lot of beginners however I think these Tabs are both really simple for beginners to get under their belt so go ahead and pause and take as much time as you need for that and then when you get back we can play through the song one two three ready go Wanna Have Fun jamming through 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 guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link 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 sound in Vibe but it's just as easy to play so I'll see you over there bye