Creep by Radiohead Tutorial/Lesson
Creep
G, B, C, Cm
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Video transcript
hey everyone it's ellen here and today i'm going to be showing you guys how to play creep by radiohead on the guitar as voted on by my patrons as this month's patron plays so if you want a little bit of voting power in the tutorials that you see here on my channel make sure to check that out down below and really quick before we jump into the tutorial i wanted to take a second to thank today's sponsor burroughs guitars if you're looking for a quality beginner guitar that is both durable and beautiful while still having an affordable price tag consider a burroughs designed in and named after the five boroughs of new york city these are the perfect starter guitar for anyone excited to begin their music journey not only are they super easy and fun to play but these guitars are the best you'll find at this inexpensive price point with six different models and several finishes to choose from you'll be sure to find the one that fits your personality and musical tastes perfectly best of all all burrows guitars ship directly and exclusively from adorama a trusted site for all your creative needs so if playing guitar is something you or a loved one have been considering check out the links in the description box and get started today so i will be basing this tutorial today off of the acoustic live version of this song and because of that this is more of an intermediate level so um but first of all let's talk about our guitar you will need it to be in standard tuning and you do not need a capo to play this in the original key i only have four chords to show you today however two of them are bar chords which is one of the reasons this can be a little bit more advanced and then i have two strumming patterns to show you one of them is a little bit of more of a simpler rhythm for beginners and then the other one is closer to how you hear it in the live version which can be a little bit more complicated with rhythm so um with all of that being said let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial and we'll start with the chords alright guys so i've zoomed in a little to take a closer look at these chords right now i'm going to show you the basic fingerings for these but if you stay tuned i will also show you something cool you can add into it to you know add some variation to make it closer to the live acoustic version but the basic chords first of all are g which looks like this and sounds like this next is one of our bar chords b after that we have c and then the last chord shape is our c minor which is the other barre chord now although you can just stick to these four chord shapes to play through the whole song if you listen to the live acoustic version he does add a little bit of like cord frills in there so i wanted to go ahead and show you how you can do that and for some of these we'll have to kind of change our fingers around so let me go ahead and zoom back in and show you how to do that all right so starting with that g chord if you do want to add in these chord variations you're going to have to change the fingering around a little bit and instead of the normal fingering we'll do it like this so it'll still sound like a g except now your pointer or first finger is available and all you want to do is press down on the first fret of that b string so you can hear the difference there all right so that's something that he does um so with the g chord that's how you can vary that the next chord is our b chord so again you're just going to play that regular but now you want to take your pinky finger and slide that up one fret so that's how you do that chord variation for the c chord you're gonna finger that just like we practiced except now your pinky is gonna go here on the third fret of the b string and then for your c minor chord again that's going to be the normal fingering except now you want to take your pinky finger slide it up one fret and move it over one string down all right and that's how you can vary those so just to reiterate all of these chord variations are totally optional but if you are up to adding them in i do think that it sounds a lot closer to the live acoustic performance version and i can also show you how we can use that in our strumming to kind of spice it up and make it sound a lot more like how he played it but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming patterns so if you're new to guitar or have trouble singing and playing at the same time i always suggest you start out with a practice pattern which is just a simple down strum on each chord change and what you want to do is just play the one down strum sing through the whole song and just take note and be aware of what word you're singing whenever those chords are changing and that'll really help string together the singing and playing and it'll make the other strumming patterns a little bit easier so just a quick example with the chorus here all you want to do is sing through it and do a single down strum on every chord change but i'm a creep four one two i'm a weirdo three four one two what the hell am i doing here two three four one two i don't belong here three four one two three four so even with this simple down strum pattern you can kind of see how we're holding out each chord for two measures that's going to be true for most of this song so once you have done that and kind of get used to where to expect those chord transitions we can go ahead and move into our first strumming pattern all right guys so strumming pattern one is the more beginner friendly rhythm of strumming that i will show you out of the two that i have today so as you can see it's eight down strums followed by an up strum and it's gonna sound like this so basically all you want to do is take this strumming pattern and repeat it twice for every chord and you can apply this for the entire song if this is where you're at so the first thing i want to tell you about the strumming pattern is i'm going to go ahead and underline some of these down strums and all you want to do there is we're going to accent those beats and basically when you're strumming you just kind of strum it a little bit extra hard to make it have a little bit more of a louder tone so instead of going one two three four five six seven eight we're gonna go one two three four five six seven eight up all right so let's just try this for the beginning intro we have our chord progressions on screen and again you wanna repeat this pattern twice for each chord and remember to accent those underlying down strums so on our g chord we have down down down down down down up one two three four five six seven eight all right and you do that twice then you go to your next chord b down down down down down down down up again twice c minor all right good and basically you can do that for the entire song so here's an example of what it would sound like with that chorus again but i'm a creepy what the hell am i doing here all right awesome and so like i said this is kind of the easier rhythm of the two strumming patterns that i wanted to show you today so if you are struggling with you know strumming rhythms and coordination and things like that you can go ahead and stick to this strumming pattern and play it through the entire song if you are somebody who would like to add in those chord variations that i showed you earlier in the video i'm going to also add a vertical line here in this pattern and so basically what that's going to represent is where we're going to kind of add in that chord variation so because we're repeating this pattern two times for each chord on the second time repeating it to the left of this vertical line is where you want to add in that chord variation so for example if we do our g chord we're going to play through this whole pattern just as is one time through one two three four five six seven eight and then here on the second repeat we wanna add in the chord variation so you want to put your um pointer finger down we're just gonna do the left half of this vertical line so down down down and then take off your pointer finger and finish it out down down so without stopping it would sound more like this all right and again that would apply to all of the chords as well so for our b chord same thing you play it through one time by itself on the second repeat go ahead and slide your pinky up down down down back down so b sounds like this c same thing put your pinky down one two three and then same with c minor all right so without stopping the whole intro if you wanted to add in those chord uh variations would sound like this do all right so again totally optional but if you want to add that in i do think it sounds really good and it kind of dresses it up a bit but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the second strumming pattern all right so the second strumming pattern is the more difficult strumming rhythm of the two as you can see it's down down up down down up down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this so before we move on let's go ahead and just take a few minutes to get used to that rhythm so let's put our g chords on to keep it simple i'm going to count us in and i want you to jump in with this strumming pattern whenever you feel comfortable one two ready go down down up down down up down whenever you can we're just getting used to the rhythm down down up down down up down up down up now if you're struggling with that rhythm please make sure to rewind and try repeating that over and over with me again until you kind of internalize it better or you know you can always stick with the first strumming pattern um but basically what i'm showing you right here is kind of like the core of what you can hear him strumming as he's going through his live performance of course he does kind of vary it up sometimes so i will show you that in a second but first of all let's just make sure that we have this um kind of generic pattern down so what you want to do is you're going to play this again two times for each chord so if we did this at the beginning of the song with our chord transitions we would have g up down down up down twice b up down up down up repeat c minor all right so again like i said you could use this strumming pattern for the entire song as well um before we move on i do want to go ahead and show you where you would add in those chord variations if that's something that you would like to do so i'm going to add a vertical line right here and basically it's the same as the previous pattern you want to repeat this pattern through two times and on the second repeat we're going to add in that chord variation on the left half of that vertical line so if we did that exact same thing our g chord remember you have to finger it this way so your pointer finger is open we're gonna go down down up down down up down up and then on the second repeat put your first finger down up and then take it off down down up down all right so again g is like this same thing with b on the second repeat scoot your pinky finger up down down up down down up down up see the same thing on the second repeat down down up down up and then c minor all right again totally optional but if you do want to add in those chord variations without stopping it would sound like this and again you could do that for the entire song and it sounds really close to the live version sounds really great now as i kind of alluded to earlier if you listen closely to the live performance of this song he does not rigidly stick to this strumming pattern the whole time he's playing this is just kind of the root of the strumming pattern but you can totally feel free to add in some extra down or up strums wherever you see fit to kind of fill in some of the patterns some more so here are just a few examples of ways that you can do this the first variation i wanted to show you is when you add an extra down strum to the first little grouping here so now instead of down down up down up we have down down down up down down up down up all right so we're just adding in that extra little down strum there it kind of fills it in another place you could add in an extra strum is an up strum in the middle grouping so if you did that instead of down down up down up we would have down down up down up down up down up all right so it's kind of filling in that middle space all right and then another variation you could do is if you added a down strum to the last little grouping here so instead of down up down down up down up we would have down down up down down down up down up all right this one is actually one of my favorites because you can clearly hear him do that a lot as he's going from one little section of the song to the other so it'd be like all right my best advice is for you to kind of experiment around play on it and just add in extra down or up strums wherever you see fit i think those are always the best way if you're going to perform this for anyone to go because then it's kind of more natural naturally what you're feeling and that will make your performance a little bit better the other thing to mention is if you do want to go with some of these variations that i've come up with you can also mix and match them and that'll make it sound really good too so for example it would sound like this all right so just a totally random example of how you can kind of mix and match these variations or come up with your own this is really a great place for all of you more adventurous players to kind of branch out on your own and see what works for you for my cover at the end i do like to vary it up and add random down and up strums throughout my cover i think it just sounds a lot more cohesive that way so definitely experiment with that but that is what i wanted to show you for this tutorial today with those four chords some of those variations and these strummings you can actually play through the whole song and have it sound really close to the original acoustic live version so now let's go ahead and put everything we've learned together to play through the song ready go when you were here before want to 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 all right but that concludes my tutorial for today i really hope that it helped if it did 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 tutorial another huge thank you to burroughs guitars for sponsoring today's video as well as a special shout out to my top patrons over on my patreon page i will have all of their names listed on screen right now and of course a thank you goes out to all of my patrons for supporting my channel and making videos just like this one possible 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 at 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 again so much for watching i really hope that it helped and i will see you in my next one bye you