Counting Stars by OneRepublic Tutorial/Lesson
Counting Stars
Am, C, G, F, Dm
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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 Counting Stars by One Republic on my zeger zad 880 C guitar so if you are interested in this model I do have $100 off in the link down below um 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 and we're going to start with our a 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 sing 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 right here the next chord shape is our C major we also have our G major then we have our bar chord f and then the last chord shape is our D minor and those are the only five 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 really memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them because it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you and if this is a skill you're currently struggling with I do have an entire practice with me playlist right here on YouTube where we go through this skill in real time together so I'll make sure to link that in the corner for you um but once you have those cords down under your belt then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming pattern that I'd recommend for this song all right guys 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 always suggest doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and play through the whole thing with a single down strum on each chord change as you sing through the song and take this time to really just get used to what word you're singing or what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing so here's a quick example what that would look like daily I've been and sleep dreaming about the things that we could be all right so that's just a quick example but You' essentially want to do that for the entire song and just really know where you're going to be changing those chords and 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've done this and you know where those chord transitions are to be expected then we can go and talk about a more full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so as you can see the strumming pattern I would recommend for this song can be a little bit more tricky we are going to be counting in a 16th note pattern today so if you don't know what that means or how to count that I would recommend checking out my beginner series cuz I cover that over there um but basically we have this we've got one E and A two E and A 3 E and A 4 e and a one E and A two E and A 3 e and a four and a one and two and a three e and four and a down down down up down up down down down up all right so this can be quite intimidating if you are new to some to strumming but the good news is once you get this strumming pattern under your belt you can apply it for the entire song so um basically what we want to do is we're going to play this entire strumming pattern one time through for each chord throughout the song so let's go ahead and take a look at the beginning we're starting here with our a minor you would go down down down down up down up down down down up to C down down down up down up down down down up to G and then to F all right so if you need to pause and slow this down to really understand how to count this Rhythm and get used to that up and down motion I would definitely recommend doing that before moving on I also have a practice with me strumming series that I just started so you can check that out in the corner here I'll make sure to link this particular strumming pattern for us to practice together as well um but basically what you want to do is slowly make sure that you can get all of the Motions down and then we're going to speed it up okay so more at full Tempo it'll sound a little more like this about the things that we could be baby I've been I've been playing cting be counting star all right and something that helps me whenever I am trying to sing on top of playing this more intricate strumming pattern is I will add some Accents in there so I'm going to go ahead and turn some of these arrows green so as you can see on beads two and four we're going to kind of accent those strums so what I mean by that is when you're strumming them you're just going to give them a little bit of extra emphasis and once you start playing this a little quicker and you're adding all those chord transitions in there it can start to get confusing and sound a little muddy so if you add these accents on two and four it can kind of help keep a little bit more of a drummy rhythm going so with the accents we have down down down down up down down down up all right and you do for every single measure for every single chord that we're playing um of course that's totally optional that's just one way that I like to do it to help me keep track of where I am when I'm singing um the other thing that's really important to remember is that this strumming pattern is very intricate so if you're new to strumming and you are not able to play this strumming pattern with muscle memory without counting it out in your head then you definitely do need to just practice going through that so again that's where my strumming practice with me comes in handy so make sure to check that out I'll link it in the the description then the last thing you want to do is if you can you want to apply a palm mute so what I'm doing there is I'm taking the side of my hand with my pick in it and I'm just gently laying that across my strings near the bridge of my guitar and as you play these strums you'll hear it's kind of more dampened a little more muted and so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to apply this Palm mute so that all my down strums are a little more bit more muted and then my up strums are going to ring out like normal so that makes the strumming pattern sound more like this we have down down up down up down down down up all right and the reason for applying the Palm you is so that you can kind of distinguish between different parts of the song so for example when I do the verses and the precour I like to apply a palm mute so let me go over a verse for you and show you what that sounds like we've got a minor c g f i see a life like a swinging Vine swing my heart across the line in my face is flashing signs seek it out and you shall find old but I'm not that old young but I'm not that bold I don't think the world is so I'm just doing what we're told all right and again like I I said in the precourse I would apply that P mute as well feel something so right theong and then when you get to the chorus I would go back to fullon ringing baby Dre we could be all right and again just remember to add in those accents on Beats 2 and four if you can of course if this is extremely overwhelming for you you just got to take it slowly first just concentrate on getting that motion of the up and down strums correct then you want to work on speeding it up then you want to add in some of those accents and then once you have all of that you can do the Palm you as kind of a last step to get through all of the um different ways to play through this song the last thing I wanted to touch on really quick is there is a part in the bridge where there's no Chords it's just kind of like very drummy and rhythmic there so what I would suggest doing there is just to take your left hand and just mute your strings by kind of holding on to them so that when you strum you can't really distinguish any sort of notes or chords and what I would do for the bridge is I would just play the exact same strumming Rhythm that we've been practicing but then sing on top of it so we've got down down down up down up down down down up take that money watch it burn sink in the river the lessons I've learned take that money watch it burn sink in the river the lessons I've learned and I would just do that for the entire Bridge until you get to that last line everything that kills me single strums makes me feel alive and then you would go back to the full strumming pattern for that last chorus so yeah that is the strumming pattern I would recommend for this song and like I said you can apply for the entire thing so just keep yourself motivated once you get this down and you've got the muscle memory for it the song will really come together after that and you could apply the strumming pattern for a lot of different other songs too so again check out my practice with me strumming patterns if you need help with it um but yeah that is the strumming pattern that I would recommend for this song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this strumming pattern under your belt I know it can be pretty intimidating if you are someone who's new to playing guitar it is a little bit more of an intermediate count for a pattern so please don't give up this does take a long time to kind of get that muscle memory developed but my string pattern practice with me should help you so again I would definitely recommend checking that out if you need help um but there's one last thing that I wanted to show you guys for this video today which is that picking pattern that you can kind of hear at the beginning of the song it's super easy to play and sounds really cool so let's go ahead and jump into the picking for this song 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 now I'm going to go ahead and break down that picking pattern that you can hear in the intro of the song it's actually quite simple once you get the pattern down so let's go ahead and explain a few things here first of all I do like to number my guitar strings as six for the low E string five 4 3 2 1 all the way to the high E string so that's how I'll be referring to these strings throughout this picking portion um and your left hand you're just going to want to continue to hold down the cord shapes that we learned earlier okay on our right hand this is the important part this is what we're using to pick our strings what I want you to do is take your pointer middle and ring finger and we're going to stick those on the fourth third and second strings so the D G and B strings respectively and then your thumb is going to move around between the sixth and the fifth string depending on what chord we're playing so let's go and just start at the beginning with our a minor chord down the lowest string that we play in A Minor is our fifth a string so that's where your thumb's going to go and you're going to go thumb and then pointer by themselves then you're going to pick the top two strings at the same time so you want to use your middle and ring finger at the same time and then come back to your pointer and that's the whole pattern okay so for a minor we have five 4 3 and two together four all right and we're just going to do that twice good and then next we're going to move on to our c chord so go ahead and make your C with your left hand but the actual P pattern for your right hand is exactly the same we've got five 4 3 and 2 4 so just like a minor and we're going to do that twice all right now for the next two chords it's going to be a little different so let's go ahead and form our G chord on our left hand your thumb now is going to move to that base string that we play so that's going to be our sixth E string all right um but other than that the pattern's the same so now we're going to go thumb pointer middle ring pointer all right 6 4 3 and 2 4 okay so these three fingers should always stay on these three strings and we're going to do that twice all right and then of course the last chord here we have is f and this is going to look just like the G our thumb is on our low E string and it goes 6 4 3 2 4 we're doing that twice all right and that is the entire picking pattern you can use that for the entirety of the intro before we go into verse one with our strumming so let's go ahead and go through what that would sound like lately I've been up been Lo sleep dreaming about the things that we could be baby I've been I've been praying hard said no more counting dollars we'll be counting stars and then when you're done here I would do a single down strum yeah will'll be counting stars and then you would go into strumming all right um but basically the only place that you would want to use that picking pattern is for that little intro so I definitely recommend trying it out if you can all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to look over this picking pattern if that's something that you want to add into your performance it is really reminiscent of the original song and it's actually not that hard of a pattern to get down so once you practice it enough it'll come like second nature and it'll be really cool to add that into your cover but yeah basically once you have the chords memorized the transitions down you can do that strumming Rhythm through muscle memory and you have the picking pattern down we can go ahead and put together all of these elements to play through the song 1 2 ready go lately I've been beening sleep dreaming about the things that we could be baby I've been I've been praying hard no more counting dollars we'll be counting stars yeah we'll be counting stars want to have fun jamy out to the rest of the song with me 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 that 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