Count On Me by Bruno Mars Tutorial/Lesson
Count On Me
C, Em, Am, G, F, Dm
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Video transcript
foreign my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Count On Me by Bruno Mars on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you'd like to learn and before we jump into it I wanted to give a quick shout out to today's sponsor and your music I will be using their Nova Go guitar in this tutorial today this is their travel size carbon fiber guitar so if you're interested in this I will make sure to leave my links in the description box down below so I would definitely consider this song More on the beginner side although it can be a little bit more intermediate depending on if you want to do some of the picking patterns as well as the bar chords and things like that but I am going to make sure that I give you a beginner friendly version as well um both that being said let's go ahead and talk about our guitar you will need it to be in standard tuning and you do not need a capo to play this song in its original key I have six chords to show you today one of them is a bar chord which is our F chord but like I said I will show you an alternative like fingering that you can use so you don't have to Bar any cords so it makes it a little bit extra more beginner friendly and then I have one strumming pattern that you can use for the entire song as well as one picking pattern that you can use if you prefer so with all of that being said let's go ahead and jump into the chords alright guys so I've zoomed in to take a closer look at these chords like I said there are six that you're going to need to know and we're going to start with our C which looks like this and sounds like this and if you don't know how to read these chord charts that you're seeing on screen I Do cover how to do that in my beginner series episode three so I will link that right here for those of you who need it our next chord is our E minor chord after that is a minor then we have G then we have D minor and then the last chord is our F chord but as promised if you're a beginner and bar chords are hard for you you can replace this Bard f for an F major seven foreign as well for the rest of the song so go ahead and pause the video take a few minutes to memorize those chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them it will make learning the rest of the song a lot easier but once you've done that we can jump into these strumming patterns so if you're a beginner at guitar or have trouble singing and playing at the same time I always suggest you start out with a practice pattern which as you can see is just a single down strum and we're going to do that for every chord change you come across in the song So as an example let's go ahead and bring up the first verse and all you want to do is basically sing through the song and practice transitioning those chords as you see them as you sing so for example in the first verse we have if you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea I'll sail the world to find you all right so that's just a quick example you basically want to do this for the entire song and just be really aware of what word you're singing whenever you're transitioning chords things like that this also a great way to kind of figure out the construction of the song for example the a minor 2 G chord transition feels a little bit faster than the rest of them because it's held out not as long so this is all stuff that you'll find out when you do the single down strum pattern but once you've done that we can actually jump into the strumming pattern that I would suggest using for this song Alright guys so today's strumming pattern is not too bad as you can see it's just down down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this foreign so basically for most of these chords you're going to want to repeat this pattern two times for each of these chords except for a minor to G because as we talked about earlier that goes a little faster so in that case you want to just play through this pattern one time so um really quick let's go ahead and put our C chords down and just play through this pattern a few measures just so you can get used to the Rhythm so I want you to jump in whenever you feel comfortable one two ready go down down down down one two three four and one two three four down down down down up down down down up one two three four and one two three four in awesome so I know that might have felt a little bit fast however this is a pretty simple strumming pattern so just make sure to pause the video rewind and practice with me until you can get it up to Tempo but once you can all we have to do now is put in some of those chord transitions so we can play through the song so again let's go ahead and bring up the first verse and as you can see here we're going to be going from our C to our E minor so down down down down and twice on C into E minor twice remember here on a minor to G we're just playing this pattern through one so a minor is down down down down down up switch to G down down down down up switch to F and we're gonna hold it out twice down down down down up twice all right awesome and as simple as that is you can actually use this strumming pattern to apply it to the whole song So for another example let's go ahead and bring up the chorus just so you can hear what that sounds like the pattern is exactly the same so we're starting on our C down down down down down down down an E minor remember here's the quick a minor to G quick transition there to f you can count on me like one two three I'll be there and then you would just keep on going so again this strumming pattern can be applied for the whole song it sounds really cute and bouncy just like the original song so I would totally suggest if you're a beginner to stick right here you can play through the whole song right now however if you are a little bit more adventurous I do actually prefer to finger pick this song Just because it sounds a little closer to the original so let's go ahead and zoom in so I can show you how to do that yeah all right guys so I've zoomed in so we can take a closer look at this picking pattern before we begin I do just want to let you guys know that I like to number my strings so my low E is six and it goes five four three two one all the way to my high e and in my head it just makes more sense to number the string so hopefully it does in your head as well but for the rest of this picking pattern section I will be referring to these strings as numbers so with that being said let's go ahead and talk about our right picking hand your thumb is going to want to pick the bass note in every chord so for example with our c chord the bass note or the bottom note that you play is your fifth string but for example in the E minor chord that would be your sixth string okay so your thumb is always going to stay on the bass note and then I want you to take your pointer your middle and your ring finger and we're going to assign these three fingers to the bottom three strings okay so for your G string your B string and your high E string it's going to be pointer middle ring accordingly okay so basically what we want to do for this picking pattern is we're going to alternate back and forth between our thumb and our other three fingers to do base and then top three treble strings okay so let's go ahead and just go through each of these chords on our c chord the bass note as we said is our fifth string so you're going to want to pick that with your thumb then take the other three fingers and pick them simultaneously just like that all right so C is going to go five three two one all the same time and we're going to do this four times so we have one two three four all right awesome and if you can do that the rest of these chords will you know follow suit so our E minor chord you're going to move your thumb from the fifth string to the low E string the sixth string but these three fingers remember are always going to stay on our top or our bottom three strings here the GBE so for E minor we have six three two one and again you want to do this four times one two three four for a minor we're going to move our thumb back to the fifth string and it's the same pattern so we have five three two one but again remember a minor to G is a quicker chord transition throughout this entire song So for a minor you just want to do this twice one two then you go to your G chord you're going to move your thumb to the sixth bottom string again and you're going to do this twice one two then we're going to go to our F chord now if you're playing the barred version of f you want your thumb to be here on the sixth bottom E string and it's going to be played four times one two three four but if you're opting to do that F major seven chord instead your fingers will have to change around to accommodate this so your thumb is going to be on the fifth a string and then I want you to scoot your three fingers up one string each so that they're on the D G and B strings okay so four three and two so we go one two three four all right but again this only applies if you do not want to do the barred version of f for The Bard version it's like this awesome and with that being said the last chord we need to know is our D minor chord so for this one your thumb is going to move to the fourth D string your other three fingers are still on the bottom three strings and this is going to follow suit we have one two three four all right so you can use this picking pattern to play through the entire song and it actually sounds really good a lot like the original so let's go ahead and bring up first one and I will show you how you can use this while you do your playthrough so we're going to start with our c chord one two three four to E minor one two three four to a minor one two to G one two to f one two three four if you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea oh seal the world to find you foreign and again I just want to show you really quick if you wanted to use this with the chorus as well it follows the exact same order so we have you can count on me like one two three I'll be there and I know when I need it I can all right and then again you would repeat that for the entire song again just like with the strumming pattern you can use this picking pattern for the whole song it sounds really cute really bouncy and upbeat like the original song so basically kind of take stock of where you're at if you want to stick with the beginner strumming patterns or if you want to do more of this intermediate level picking pattern you know pick which one you'd want to do but that's how we can play through the entire song so with that being said let's go ahead and go through our playthrough you can count on me cause I Can Count On You one two ready go do you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea I'll sail the world to find you Wanna 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 Fast Track and play along tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below as well as in this icard right up here alright but I think that does it for my tutorial today so thank you so much for watching if it helped you 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 another huge thank you goes out to Enya music for sponsoring this video as well as a special shout out to all of my top patrons over on my patreon page I will have all of their names listed on screen right now and of course the thank you goes out to all of my patrons for supporting my channel and making videos just like this impossible you guys are awesome 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 of 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 I think that concludes the video so thank you so much for watching I really hope that it helps and I will see you in my next one coming out really soon bye