Death by a Thousand Cuts by Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
Death by a Thousand Cuts
C, G/B, Am7, Gsus4, F/C, Dm7
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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 death by a thousand cuts by taylor swift on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something you want to learn and make sure to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on another new tutorial also follow me on instagram for your chance to win a one-on-one lesson with me all right so just a quick disclaimer i am going to be basing my tutorial today off of the way taylor played this in her tiny desk concert so kind of the more acoustic version than the album version however you can totally play it like the album version using this tutorial as well um but anyways that is how i'm going to base most of this tutorial off of so if you want to play in the same key as taylor played in her concert version you want to make sure your guitar is in standard tuning and go ahead and put your capo on the fourth fret to play in the same key that she did on top of that we're going to need to know six different chords none of them are bar chords so no worries there and i also wanted to show you one strumming pattern that she uses in the song and then one picking pattern if you want to venture into picking so let's go ahead and jump into an overview of what i'll be showing you in this tutorial all right so like i said at the beginning there are six chords to play through this song i do want to do a disclaimer really quick i watched her play her live version her tiny desk version a bunch of times and i do think that this is how she's doing the chords but i'm not a hundred percent sure that the names of these chords that i'm using in this tutorial are 100 accurate so make sure to just take the names of these chords with a grain of salt but anyway here are the chords that i use so we have a c g b a minor seven g suspended four f slash c and d minor seven so don't let the names of these chords discourage you in any way some of these chord names are the ones that i could find the closest to but i'm not 100 sure if that's actually what the chord is so things like g slash b and f c i'm not really sure if that's exactly what this chord is but anyways if you do want to take a closer look at how to play these chords make sure to skip over to my chords section where i will break them down for you and show you how to play them however if you are already familiar with these chords then we can move on to the strumming patterns that i want to show you for this song so the first strumming pattern i always suggest beginners start with is a practice pattern which is just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change if you are new to guitar i think this is a great way to get used to the song and get used to playing those chords on tempo or on beat without adding the extra layer of complexity of using a strumming pattern and things like that so if you want me to go over an example of how we would use this to practice in the song make sure to skip to this time here where i will walk you through an example of it however if you are a little more advanced feel like you don't need to do that then that's totally fine we can skip into the strumming pattern that i do actually use in my cover here at the end so the strumming pattern i do like to use for this song we're going to call string pattern one and as you can see it's down up up down up up down down up and it's going to sound a little something like this now i do think this is pretty close to how taylor plays her strumming pattern in her performance so if you want me to break it down for you a little bit more show you how we're going to use that in the song skip to this time here where i will break down the strumming pattern for you however if you feel like you already got the rhythm just by watching me then we can go ahead and move on to the picking pattern that i'm going to be showing you in this tutorial so the picking pattern i'm going to show you in this song is going to sound a little something like this now i know that might sound complicated um but it is going to be a little bit easier to understand once we break it down so if you do want to learn the picking pattern for this song go ahead and skip to this time here where i will break it down for you a little bit more and explain how to do it however if you feel like you already got the picking pattern just by watching me play through it you can always skip to the play through here at the end where i will go through the whole song and have the lyrics and chords and everything on screen in front of you but um yeah if you wanted to break this song down a little bit more and get a closer look at any of these parts let's go ahead and jump into the more in-depth part of this tutorial and we'll start with the chords all right so let's take a closer look at the chord you need to know to play this song again like i said during the overview i'm not sure if the names of these chords are 100 accurate so take it with a grain of salt but for the rest of the tutorial i will be referring to these chords as these names okay so let's go ahead and start with our c chord that's the first chord in the song and it looks like this and sounds like this after that we have what i call g b that's the closest that i could find but anyway it looks like this and sounds like this all right if you know the name of this chord please let me know in the comments um after that we've got our a minor seven chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got our g suspended 4 which i think that's what this is so again if you know what this is let me know in the comments but it looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our f slash c chord again this is one of those ones that i'm totally guessing based on my best guess but um yeah it's gonna look like this and sound like this and then the last chord you need to know is our d minor seven chord which looks like this and sounds like this and now this is a little bit of a bar chord when it comes to your first finger however i will tell you right now um when taylor picks it she doesn't actually play the top e string so if you want to you could just play those without barring the first finger alright but anyway those are the six chords you need to know for the song all right so once you have those chords memorized make sure you can transition between them because if you're going to do the picking pattern for the song it is important that you can transition rather quickly if you're having trouble with transitioning between chords i do have a tmt right here that will take you step by step and give you exercises and things like that to practice transitioning with that being said let's move on to the strumming patterns that you can use for this song all right so the very first strumming pattern of course is our practice pattern which is just one down strum on the b for every chord change i always suggest you start right here if you are a beginner and you're not really used to singing and playing at the same time and things like that this is really going to help you be able to build up your skills so that you can do more complicated strumming patterns in the future so let me go ahead and go through an example of what this would sound like with the first verse again i have my c chord on since that's the first chord in the song and we're just gonna strum each one of these chords down one time saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts flashbacks waking me up i get drunk but it's not enough cause the morning comes and you're not my baby this song is really hard for me to sing but anyway you would want to just do that exact same thing through the entire song until you're used to where those chord transitions are going to be and then once you get through with that and you feel like pretty confident with it then we can move on to the actual strumming pattern that i do like to use in my cover here at the end so now let's go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern i do actually like to use as you can see it's down up up down up up down down up and what you're going to do is play through this entire pattern one time for every chord change this is really close to what i think taylor swift plays in her concert version so let's go ahead and go through the motions i have my c chord on since that's the first chord in the song and let's just go through the motions we've got down up down up down down up all right so again if you're a beginner it can be a little bit uncomfortable to go from a down strum to another down strum or an up strum to another up strum so just remember to kind of circle your hand back around and prepare for that next strum every single time that'll help you not have to think about it as much when you're thinking about the strumming pattern so anyway now that we've played through the motions let's go ahead and put it in rhythm so let me play it for you once you can hear what it sounds like one two three four down up up down up up down up down up up down up up down up all right so that's the rhythm why don't you go ahead and try that with me with your c chord on i'll count us in one two three four down up up down up up down down up down up up down up up down down up all right awesome so that is the rhythm again like i said you just want to play through this strumming pattern one time for every chord change the only time that she uses the strumming patterns is going to be during the choruses so let's go ahead and put the chord transitions on screen for the chorus because again this is where she's going to use this strumming pattern the most often as you can see it's going to start with our c chord so we've got down up up down up up down down up then you switch your g suspended four down up up down up up down down up then we've got f slash c down up up down down up then back to jesus four down up up down up up down down and just to kill my time i take the long way i ask the traffic lights if it'll be all right they say i don't know all right so cool so that is how the strumming pattern is going to sound again she likes to use that during the choruses whereas during the verses she'll actually pick a picking pattern so let's go ahead and jump into how to play that picking pattern hey future ellen here so i was just playing through my cover when i realized i actually do have a second strumming pattern that is used throughout the song so i wanted to quickly teach that to you guys it's super simple it's just eight down strums so taylor only uses this twice throughout her performance so the place you're gonna want to put this is the very end of the first verse um you said it was a great love one for the ages but if the story is over why am i still writing pages so we're going to kind of splice this into our first strumming pattern so if you put your c chord on we've got down up up down up up down up just like strumming pattern one then you go to your g suspended four down up up down down up then we have our f slash c down up up down up up down down up and then here on the last g suspended four we wanna just strum it down eight times one two three four five six seven eight all right what that's gonna do is just kind of build up that momentum and that energy to go into the um chorus where we're gonna go back to our picking so let's try that one more time starting with our c chord down up up down up up down down up f c and then we have one two three four five six seven eight all right so let me just go ahead and sing that for you so you can hear what that is said it was a great love one for the ages but if the story's over why am i still writing pages all right so that's really simple um it's just used twice in the song like i said so if you want to add that in there it is going to help build up that kind of um energy into the different parts of the song but again that is going to be just kind of a second strumming pattern you can totally throw in there if you want to just go with the first strumming pattern throughout the whole song you can do that as well so yeah so now with that being said let's go ahead and go into the picking pattern that you can use for this tutorial but it wasn't enough but i'll be all right it's just a thousand cuts all right so i've zoomed in a little bit so we can take a closer look at this picking pattern in case you're not used to any of my other tutorials i do like to refer to the strings as numbers in my head that just makes more sense so i am going to go ahead and show you how i refer to these strings as numbers with the low e string being number six and it goes all the way up to the high e string which is number one so for this entire picking little section i will be referring to the strings as numbers all right so let's go ahead and jump into it so let's actually start with our right hand okay this is what's going to be you know in charge of picking all of the strings so for all of the chords that we're going to do picking on your thumb is going to be in charge of the bottom three strings so six five and four your pointer finger is always going to be on this g string here and then your middle finger is always going to be taking care of the second b string okay so these two fingers will always be on these two strings your thumb is going to kind of pump back and forth between the three bass notes okay so um let's go ahead and jump into it and we'll go with our first chord which is our c chord so go ahead and put your c chord on your left hand and what we're going to do is play the following order we've got five because that's the base note in our c chord three two three four three all right so that's the little picking order we've got five three two three four three if i call it out by our fingers we've got thumb pointer middle pointer thumb pointer all right and that's how we're going to pick our c cool so the rest of this picking pattern is going to be very similar as far as the right hand goes what's going to be a little bit more tricky is the left hand the one that we're you know holding all the chord shapes down with so after we have c which is five three two three four three what you wanna do next is go to our next chord which is our g b chord and for that just take off your ring finger and then move your middle finger up one string okay so now we have the same thing as far as the right hand we've got five three two three four three all right one more time five three two three four three from there we're gonna go to our a minor seven chord so for that just take your second middle finger and move it down one string all right and so now our right hand is still going to be exactly the same we've got five three two three four three one more time five three two three four three all right and then after that we've got our g sus4 so what i'm doing there is you're moving your middle finger up one string and then reaching across with your ring finger and putting it on the third fret of that low e string and then now with your picking hand you want to move your thumb from the fifth string to the sixth string because now the sixth string is our bottom note so but the rest of the fingers are the same so now we're gonna go six three two three four three all right one more time six three two three four three all right so let's do that whole first line again starting with our c we've got five three two three four three switch to your g slash b five three two three four three switch to your a minor seven five three two three four three then switch to your g suspended four and move your thumb to your sixth string six three two three four three all right awesome so once you have that far you're actually halfway done with the picking pattern so i'm going to go ahead and move on after you're on your g sus4 the next chord you want to go to is your f c chord which looks like this now remember even though this is how i like to play it with my strumming patterns and stuff like that i did watch taylor swift's tiny desk performance over and over again and she actually doesn't have this pinky finger here what she does is she'll just play it with her ring finger here so remember this is the exact same this is still our f slash c chord but if you want to do it while picking the way taylor did you can just put your ring finger here instead of having your pinky and your ring finger okay so um with this we're going to move our thumb for our picking to the fourth string but then the rest of the pattern is the same so we've got four three two three four three one more time four three two three four three then from here you go to your a minor seven chord and earlier we played five three two three four three but for this second a minor seven you wanna stick on your fourth string so again we've got four three two three four three all right then here you go to your d minor seven and you're still staying on your right hand the same string so you're still on four three two three four three again four three two three four three and then the last chord in this little line is going back to the g suspended four go ahead and put that cord back on and for this one on your right hand you are going to pick it the same way we picked it earlier so you go back to your sixth string six three two three four three all right so let's put that last half of it back together starting from our f slash c so remember for this last half of the pattern instead of focusing on the fifth string we're focusing on our fourth string when we're picking so we're going four three two three four three for most of this so with our f slash c on we've got four three two three four three then go to your a minor seven same thing on your right hand four three two three four three then you go to your d minor seven same thing on your right hand four three two three four three and then go to your g suspended four and you're switching to your sixth string on your thumb six three two three four three all right and congratulations once you get there you have played through the whole thing one time and all she does when she's doing her performance is she just cycles over and over and over again so let's go over the entire thing starting with our c chord at the very beginning so with our c chord on we've got five three two three four three switch to your g slash b five three two three four three switch your a minor seven five three two three four three go to your g suspended four six three two three four three next line is f slash c now we're focusing on our fourth string four three two three four three a minor seven again four three two three four three d minor seven four three two three four three and then back to your g suspended four six three two three four three awesome so i know that's a lot to take in but once you practice it slowly and speed it up it does become a lot easier and like i said it's very repetitive she does use the same pattern for the entire song basically so let's go ahead and go through it without stopping do nice so once you can get the transitions without stopping all you want to do now is make sure you have that rhythm down so instead of them being all straight forward what you're going to want to do is hold out some of these a little bit longer so it's actually going to sound like this we're holding certain beats all right and so you want to have that same rhythm for all of these so let's do it again but uh let's put the rhythm in there so we've got c g slash b a minor seven g suspended four f slash c a minor seven d minor seven g sus four all right great so once you get that again all you have to do is practice until you can speed it up a little bit and then you can play through the song so let's go ahead and go through that one more time in rhythm without stopping saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts flashbacks waking me up get drunk but it's not enough cause the morning comes in your number baby all right great so um again this is going to take a little bit of practice you'll definitely have to pause the video and practice this at your own tempo make sure you start out slow and then as you start to get it and your fingers start to you know know where those next chords are going to be then start speeding it up until you can get it at tempo but um that is how she does the majority of her picking pattern and for you know simplicity's sake that's just what i'm going to teach you she does switch it up a little bit sometimes in her live performances but for the purposes of adding covers or anything like that this is sufficient so again practice this until you get it and that is the picking pattern for this song all right so once you have those chords memorized you practice transitioning between them you've gotten that strumming pattern down for the courses and you've practiced that picking pattern for the verses we can put everything we learned in this tutorial together to play through the whole song i will be putting the lyrics and the chords and the strumming and picking and all that stuff that you need to know on screen in front of you here for the play through at the end so um yeah let's go ahead and put everything we learned together to play death by a thousand of cuts by taylor swift good luck chandelier still flickering here cause i can't pretend it's okay when it's not flashbacks waking me up get drunk but it's not enough it's okay when it's not is one for the ages if the story's over why am i still writing pages say goodbye is death by a thousand cuts flashbacks waking me up get drunk but it's not enough cause the morning comes and you're not my baby i'll it's okay when it's not death by a thousand cuts my heart my hips my body my love trying to find a part of me that you didn't touch gave up on me like i wasn't that drug now i'm searching for signs in a haunted club our songs are films united we stand our country guess it was a lawless land quiet my fears with the touch of your hand paper cut stings from our paper thin plants my time my wine my spirit my trust trying to find a part of me you didn't take up gave you so much but it wasn't enough but i'll be all right it's just a thousand cuts get drunk but it's not enough cause you're not my baby i look through the windows of this love even though we boarded them still flickering here cause i can't pretend it's okay when it's not no it's not it's death by a thousand cuts trying to find a part of me that you didn't touch my body my love my trust but it wasn't enough it wasn't enough no no i take the long way home i ask the traffic lights if it'll be all right they say i don't know all right so that was my tutorial for death 5000 cuts by taylor swift i really hope that you enjoyed it if it helped you make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on another new tutorial 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 things that you want to see and i also have giveaways going on every month on my instagram so make sure to check that out if you want to get a free one-on-one lesson with me this is also where i go to find people to feature in my new segment forever features this week we have prisha playing cornelius street by taylor swift let's give it a listen so if you want to be featured in an upcoming video be sure to follow me on instagram and post a video of you playing any song you've learned from any of the tutorials on my channel use the hashtag forever features in the description so i can find it and the next feature spot could be you and one last little plug if you liked the shirt i was wearing in today's tutorial this is my forever faithful guitar shirt which you can find in my merch store link down below as well as under this video every purchase there really helps my channel to grow and allows me to continue making these free tutorials for you guys so thank you so much to anyone who's ever supported me in that way and i guess that concludes this video so thank you so much for watching and i will see you in the next one you