Complicated by Avril Lavigne Tutorial/Lesson
Complicated
Dm, Bb, F, C, Gm
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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 Complicated by Abra LaVine on my Orange Wood Brooklyn guitar so if you're interested in this model I'll have more information linked down below I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to my patrons for voting on this song as this month's Patron picks so if you want to have a little bit of voting power in the songs you see me Teach here on my channel make sure to check out my patreon page I'll link that 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 you only need to know five different chord shapes to play through this song although most of them are bar chords but let's go ahead and start with our D 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 my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out the next chord is our B flat then we have have our F major after that is our C and then the last chord is our G minor and those are the five chords to play through this song 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 the song so much easier and if you are somebody who's currently struggling with how to play those bar chords I did just release my brand new bar chord miniseries on how to play bar chords so I'll make sure to link episode one right here for you guys but once you have those cords under your belt we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that you can use for this song So as I always say if you are a beginner or somebody who struggles with playing guitar while singing at the same time the first thing I would suggest is to bring up the song and go ahead and sing through it while playing a single down strum on each chord change and just take a mental note of what word you're singing whenever those chords are changing this will help with singing with the full sing p pattern later on so here's a quick example of what that would look like chill out yell back it's all been done before and if you could only let it be you would see all right so that's just a quick example but you would basically want to do that for the entire song and just make sure you know where those chords are going to be changing this 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'll make sure to leave that link in the description box for you um but once you get used to that single down strum we can go ahead and bump it up a notch by talking about a full strumming pattern all right guys so for this first strumming pattern this is going to be the main one that we'll play through most of the choruses um it's pretty simple to count we just have one and two and a three and four and a all right so you can see here I'm repeating this pattern to fill out a full measure but the reason I wanted to just show you kind of the half measure is because we're actually going to play this pattern one time per chord for the intro and the choruses so for example if we take a look at the chorus you're on your D Minor we would go down down down down up to your B flat down down down down up to your F down down down down up to your C down down down down up all right so if you string it together and play it a little bit faster it'll sound like this D Minor D flap f c down down down down up down down down up you got it why you have to go and make things so complicated I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else HS me frustrating and like all right and you would basically keep going from there and that's how you could use this pattern to play through the choruses the other place you'll see this pattern is in that intro which looks exactly the same on the guitar uhhuh FL like this uhhuh that's the way it is all right and then the last place you'll see this is in that little break part before she goes into that last verse and chorus no no no all right so you can see there for that little break section you will repeat the pattern twice per chord to fill out that full measure um but basically this is the main shamming pattern you can use for most of the song the one place I would suggest using a different pattern would be the verse so let's go ahead and talk about strumming pattern too hey really quick in addition to the printable guide we've been looking at did you know I also offer customizable backing tracks polls for What songs you want to learn next and even video chats if you're having trouble you can unlock all these perks and more if you become a patron which helps me grow my channel and make more videos just like this one or if patreon's not your thing you can still help me out a lot by giving me a thumbs up and leaving a comment below to help me reach more people in YouTube's recommendations it only takes a second but makes a huge difference so thanks so much and let's get back into it all right guys so as you can see strumming pattern 2 is a little bit more detailed we're still in a 16th note pattern and it's going to count like this we have one E and A 2 E and A 3 E and A 4 E and A down down down down up up down down up down down down down up up down down up all right and since this pattern does fill out a full measure you would only play this pattern one time per cord cord and we would use this for the verses and the precour so for example if we bring up verse one we're starting with our F we have down down up up down down down up to D Minor down down down down up up down down up to B flat down down down up up down down down up to C down down down up up down down down up all right and like I always say whenever I present these strumming patterns in these videos this is just my suggestion I do think it sounds pretty good like the original song but please feel free to adjust this however you see fit and how you naturally start playing it something I've noticed that I will do is I will actually add an upstrom on beat three sometimes so I'll be like down down down up down up down down down up all right but that's just an example of how you can go ahead and like create a different strumming pattern or make this strumming pattern your own this is just the basic strumming Rhythm that I think sounds good with this song so take that for what it's worth um one last thing I would suggest for this strumming pattern is to add a palm mute so if you don't know what that is I'm basically just taking my right hand with my pick in it and I'm taking the side of my palm right here and just gently laying that on the bridge of my guitar and if you keep that there as you strum you'll hear that it kind of dampens the sound of the strings instead of letting it ring out and if you apply this Palm mute to this strumming p pattern whenever you do the verses it kind of lets the vocals shine a little more which I think is pretty reminiscent of AAL lavine's version so here's a quick example of what this would sound like with the pal mute we have F D Minor B flap to C you got it chill out what you yelling lay back it's all been done before and if you could only let it be you would see all right so that's my suggestion for strumming but of course if this rhythm is complicated you can always stick with the first strumming pattern that I showed you and play that for the entire song as well all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get those strumming rhythms under your belt the more you can play the pattern without really counting it out in your head and thinking about it too much the easier it'll be to sing on top of it so you really want to drill that in and get those rhythms under your belt and get that muscle memory going before you try to add the singing on top um but once you have those trimming rhythms down and you've got the chords memorized and the transitions are good we can go ahead and put all of that together to play through the song one two ready go uhhuh like this uh-huh that's the way it is want to have fun jaming 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 FastTrack and playong 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 Vibe and feel but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye