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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 Cupid by 50 50 on the guitar huge shout out and thank you goes to Lava music for sponsoring today's video I will be featuring the brand new lava me play in this video so stay tuned for a little bit more about that later 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 alright guys so you only need to know five chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our E minor which looks like this and sounds like this foreign 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 A7 we also have our D major then there's our B minor chord foreign and then the last chord shape is our D7 and those are the five chords you need to know to play the 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 will make learning the rest of the song so much easier and this is actually the first thing I wanted to show you about this lava me play guitar one of their smart features includes the practice app where you can actually choose the chord shapes that you're currently working on and it will help you learn to transition between them faster seriously I was impressed with how many chord shapes they had available to choose from Beyond just your basic open chords and once you select the chords you want to work on and put them in the order of the song you're trying to learn you just start playing and the lava me play will listen to your shapes and let you know when you're nailing the transitions it can even generate a report at the end of your practice sesh to let you know how you're doing over time which is so cool of course if you haven't gotten your hands on this guitar yet you can also check out my practice with me Series where we go through this skill in real time together but once you have those chord shapes memorized and under your belt then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming so if you are a beginner or somebody who struggles with singing and playing guitar at the same time the first thing I'd suggest you do is to bring up the song and go ahead and play each chord shape with a single down strum as you sing through the song and this will just give you a chance to really get used to where those chord transitions are going to happen so here's a quick example of the first verse a hopeless romantic all my life surrounded by couples all the time all right so you would basically want to do this for the entire song and just get really used to where those chord transitions are going to be happening this is actually something you can 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 but once you have that under your belt we can talk about a little bit more of a full strumming pattern for this song all right guys so to match the bounciness of this song I would suggest doing a simple down down up up down up strumming pattern so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk a little bit more about this Rhythm alright guys so we are going to be sticking with an eighth note strumming pattern today so basically it's going to count like this we have one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down down up down up down down up up down up and basically what you would want to do is play this pattern one time through for each chord throughout the song so let's go ahead and take a look at the verse and apply this pattern we have our E minor chord you want to do the full pattern one time through down down up up down up so tier A7 down down up up down up to your D down down up up down up to B minor down down up up down up all right all right and this is the majority of the song right here so without stopping we have E minor right and you can actually apply this for the entire song including the pre-chorus and the chorus as well so let's take a look at those sections I'm feeling lonely on that D7 I like to just do a single down strum leading into the chorus and then for the chorus I pick back up on this strumming pattern again I gave a second chance to kill me all right and that is how you could apply the strumming pattern for the entire song so again pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this strumming pattern under your belt and internalize it a little bit and that'll make singing on top of it so much easier and this actually another feature I wanted to highlight about the lava me play practice app they do have a strumming section where you can input a certain strumming Rhythm and it will help you practice that with a metronome to get it internalized into your body and I get asked all the time how to improve on singing while playing guitar and I promise the more naturally you're able to strum without counting the Rhythm in your head the easier it'll be to add singing on top of it so I definitely recommend using the hi lava system that's built into the lava me play to help you with the skill but once you get that strumming pattern under your belt we can talk a little bit more about a picking pattern that I think sounds really cute with this song all right guys so let's go ahead and start off by talking about our right hand or our picking hand for the strings what I want you to do is take your pointer middle and ring finger and you're going to put those on the bottom three strings the g b and e and they're going to live here the whole time whereas your thumb is going to rotate between the sixth string the fifth string and the fourth string basically depending on whatever chord shape you're playing it's going to cover that bass note okay so that's the right hand let's go ahead and talk about the left hand and we'll go through this one chord at a time so if we put our E minor chord shape down what you want to do is pick the base note so that's our sixth string then you want to come in and pick the bottom three strings at the same time so it goes thumb bottom three and then you're gonna mute the strings by just tapping on them so that's what that X means all right and then you want to repeat this entire thing twice so we have all right and that pattern is going to be the same for all of the rest of the chords so let's go ahead and take a look at our A7 now your thumb is going to move to the fifth a string because that's the bass note in A7 but then the pattern's the same all right for your D chord your thumbs moving to the fourth D string and then for B minor your thumb's moving back to that fifth string all right if you wanted to play this picking pattern for that D7 chord it would look just like your D you have your thumb on your fourth string all right so you can see the pattern is the same for all of the chords your thumb is the only thing that's really moving around a lot so let's go ahead and take a look at the verse we have E minor to a seven to D to be minor and again this would go for all of basically the whole song so we have a hopeless romantic all my life surrounded by couples all the time I guess I should take it as a sign all right I like to use the picking pattern for the verses and the pre-chourses but if you wanted to you could use it for the course as well so let's go ahead and go through each other section in this song for the pre-chorus it sounds like this I'm feeling lonely oh I wish I'd find a lover that could hold me now I'm crying in my room so skeptical of love but still I wanted more more again I like to visit a single strum there and then if you wanted to use the picking for the course you could use it here as well I gave a second chance to Cupid but now I'm Lefty feeling stupid oh the way he makes me feel that love isn't real Cupid is so dumb all right so this picking pattern just like with strumming can be applied for the whole song but I like to personally use it just for the verses and the pre-courses alright guys so again pause the video and take as much time as you need to get used to the coordination that's required to pick with your right hand individual strings like this if you are new to picking it can take a while to get used to so just give yourself lots of time to get used to it but once you have that down we can put everything we've learned together to play through the song one two ready go a hopeless romantic all my life I'm feeling lonely Wanna Have Fun jamming 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 Fast Track and play along 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