Cowgirls by Morgan Wallen Tutorial/Lesson
Cowgirls
Em7, C, G, D, Em
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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 cowgirls by Morgan Wallen featuring nnest on my Martin 15m guitar so I'll link more information about this guitar down below if you're interested 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're only going to need to know five different chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our E minor 7 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 shape is our C major then we have our G major we also have our D major and then last we have our regular open E minor all right and those are the only five chords you need to know to play through this song all right guys 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 and you might be wondering why we have two different versions of E minor in there we have E minor and E minor 7 um you can definitely just stick to one or the other whichever you prefer but the reason I have E minor 7 in there is because it's going to sound a lot better when we do our picking pattern towards the end of the video so just keep that in mind but anyways if transitioning your cord shapes fast enough is something that you're currently struggling with I would recommend checking out my practice with me Series right here on YouTube where we go through this skill in real time together but once you have those under your belt then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would 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 suggest doing is to ring up the song and go ahead and play through the entire thing with a single down strum on every chord change as you sing through the song and you just want to take this time to really get used to what word you're singing what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look like with the chorus Long Live cow girls never going to settle on down girls leave you in a lonely ghost town world where the sun don't rise Rodeo 41 all right so that's just a 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 transitioning 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 guys um but once you can do this single down strm pattern then we can go ahead and add to it to make more of a full Str pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so for the strumming pattern I would recommend for this song it is going to be a little bit more complicated we are going to be counting in a 16th note pattern pattern so if you don't know what that is or how to count that I would definitely recommend checking it out in my beginner series cuz I Do cover that there um but basically it's going to sound like this we have one E and A two E and A 3 E and A 4 e and a one E and A 2 E and A 3 E and A 4 e and a one E and A 2 e and a three e and a four E and A down down up down down down up down down up up down down down up all right so the strumming Rhythm can a little more complicated if you are more on the beginner side so definitely just take as much time as you need to get that Rhythm under your belt um but before we move on I wanted to go ahead and add a vertical line here kind of in the middle and basically what this is going to represent is where we want to change chords so essentially this strumming pattern is going to be played one time through per chord pairing all right so we're playing two different chords within this one measure so if we take a look at how the song goes almost the whole song goes from E minor to C to G to D so let's go ahead and just break down what that would look like with this pattern starting on our E minor chord you're going to do the left half of this pattern so the first two down strums one E and A 2 E and A then you're going to switch to your next chord which is our C major and finish out the right half of this pattern up up down down down up all right so it's split right there in the middle E minor C then we do the same thing with the next two chords we're on our G chord for the left half down down switch to your D and finish it out up up down down down up all right so again you can apply this pattern for the entire song but just remember that we're changing chords in the middle of the pattern so Al together without stopping it would sound like this we've got E minor C to g d down up up down down down up down down up up down down down up all right so we are going a little bit slow for this pattern so once you get kind of the motion of the up and downs and everything and you've kind of internalize that Rhythm a little more then what you want to do is work on speeding it up so closer to full Tempo it would sound more like this we have one 2 ready go one E and A 2 e and a three e and a four and a minor c g d you got it Long Live cow girls never going to settle on down girls leave you in a lonely ghost town world where the sun don't rise R too 4 one night love you like a Mustang one hand on them gy up bles p in your heart with some good aim on a good by right but it's finez it's kind of cow girls all right so that was an example of the chorus and this is where I would recommend using the strumming pattern throughout the song but if you did want to strum through the whole song we can go ahead and look at how a verse would sound as well so let's go ahead and look at verse one got E minor down C to g d she at the field and fire just cutting across a pasture she'll have you falling for it all and leave right after and she got a cold heart she got a warm up from the same CLA she got a bug wild little bit a whole lot of outla she trouble and I tell you right now y all live cow girls all right and then you would go into the chorus so basically this strumming pattern I think sounds really great with the entire song it might be a little bit hard at first to get the Rhythm down but once you have that down and internalized you can apply it for the whole thing and it sounds really great um however there is one thing that I like to add in my verses which is the picking pattern that you can hear throughout the song so let's go ahead and talk a little bit about how you would do picking all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really memorize this strumming Rhythm and get it under your belt it can take a while to get that muscle memory down where you can play it without thinking about the counting so definitely pause on this video and take as long as you need to master that but once you have that we can go and talk about a picking pattern that you can use for this song as well all right guys so I'm going to show you this picking pattern in the way that I think is easiest to explain so the first thing I need to tell you is how I number my strings so I always number my strings in these tutorials from six which is our low E string 5 4 3 2 1 all the way down to our high E string which is one so just keep that in mind as I show you how to do this piging pattern um as I said earlier in the chords part we are going to be using our E minor 7 in the picking version instead of our regular E minor and you'll see why that sounds a lot closer to the original song in a second here so basically before we begin let's go ahead and talk about our right hand our picking hand okay your thumb is going to either be on this low E the sixth the fifth or the fourth string okay and then your pointer middle and ring finger they're going to live down here at the bottom three strings respectively so pointer on G middle finger on B and your ring finger on that E string here okay so the only thing that should be moving throughout this picking pattern is your thumb so now let's go ahead and look at how we can do this we're going to put our E minor 7 chord down on our left hand and what you want to do is take your thumb and pick the bottom or base string which is our E string okay then you're going to take your pointer finger pick that third string then you're going to take your middle and ring finger and pick the bottom two strings at the same time that's why they're in parentheses okay so we have 6 3 two and one and then instead of letting it ring we're just going to take our hand and kind of slap the strings to kind of mute them so we have all right and the Rhythm for that is one E and A two e and so this is again the first half of a measure 1 e and 2 e and then we go to our c chord your thumb is now going to move to the fifth string because we're always going to cover the lowest string in each chord and for C that is our fifth a string but the pattern's the same we're going to go 5 3 2 and one at the same time and then mute and again the Rhythm for that is 3 E and A 4 E and A okay so the slaps come on two and four so together with those measures on E minor 7 we have 1 E and A 2 E and A 3 e and a four e and D okay just like with strumming we're splitting the measure between E minor 7 and C now when we go to our G chord this is going to be a little bit different here again your thumbs moving to the bottom E string because that's the lowest in our G chord we're going to go 6 3 2 and one together so just like earlier but this time after we mute the strings you're going to come back and pick the bottom two again and then add another mute so for G we have 6 3 2 1 mute 2 1 mute all right so it's a little bit different we're adding something at the end there so we've got the Rhythm for that one is 1 e and 2 e and okay so this time the mute comes on the two and the and 1 E and A 2 E and A all right and then to finish it out we go to our last chord our D and for this one super simple all you want to do is move your thumb to the fourth D string and instead of picking any strings individually we're just going to pick all four of these in the D chord at the same time okay so you're picking thumb pointer middle ring all the same time and then again just mute your strings and the Rhythm for this part is just picking on three muting on four all right so for G to D it'll sound like this 1 E and A 2 E and A 3 E and A 4 E and A so definitely make sure you know how to count your 16th note rhythms that'll help you a lot with this picking pattern now if we put all of our four chords together it'll sound like this E minor 7 c g to D okay and once you can do that we want to work on speeding it up a little until you can play at Tempo so more at Tempo it'll sound like this she'll set the field on fire just cutting across the pasture she'll have you falling for it all and leave right after and she got a cold heart she got a warm smout cut from the same clock she kind of Buck Wild little bit Angel whole lot of Outlaw she's trouble but I'll tell you right now you Long Live cow girls so there on cowg girls I would go into the strumming pattern that we practiced earlier in the video um sorry about my singing this song is simultaneously too high and too low for me um but anyways that is the picking pattern that I would recommend playing for this song you could actually use it for the entire song if you listen to the original it is kind of you know woven throughout but this is the easiest way I found to play the picking pattern all right guys so once again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to look this picking pattern over and really get it under your belt if that's something that you're new to doing it can take a lot of time to get the coordination down for your right hand and your left hand to work together and get the rhythms down so definitely give yourself a lot of time and pause on the screen to work on it as much as you need to um but once you have it under your belt we can put together everything we've learned in this tutorial today to play through the song One 2 ready go she'll set the field on fire just cutting across the pasture she'll love you falling for it all leave right after and she got a cold heart she got a warm smile cut from the same Want to Have Fun jamming out to the rest of the song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page we can unlock access to this as well as all my other FastTrack and playalong guitar tutorials I'll make sure to 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 I'll see you over there bye