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Don't Look Back in Anger by Oasis Tutorial/Lesson

Don't Look Back in Anger

C, F, G, Am, E7, Fm

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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 Don't Look Back at Anger by Oasis on the guitar. One quick note about this song is that the original version is not quite in standard tuning, but the precise tuning is kind of hard to explain. So, if you want to play this with the album version, just know that if you're going to stay in standard tuning, which is how I will be teaching this tutorial, it is going to sound a little bit sharp. Now, with that being said, here is a quick overview of everything I'll be covering in this video today. And now we can go ahead and get started. All right, guys. So, you only need to know six different chord shapes to play through this song. And we're going to start with our C major, 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 series right here on YouTube. So, make sure to check that out right here. The next chord shape is our G major. We also have our A minor. Then there's our E7. And then the last two chords are our bar chords. We've got our F major. And then lastly is our F minor. And those are the only six 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, cuz it'll make learning the rest of this song so much easier for you. And if this is a skill you're currently struggling with, I do have a practice with me series right here on YouTube where we go through these chord transitions in real time and build up the speed together. So, if you're interested in that, I will link that in the corner. Um, but once you have these chords 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 bring up the song and go ahead and go through the entire thing with just a single downstrum on each chord change as you sing through the song. And you want to take this time to really get used to what word or what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing. So, here's a quick example of what that would look like. Slip inside the eye of your mind. Don't you know you might find a better place to play? All right, so that's just a really 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 changing. And this actually something to 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. But once you've done this and you know where to expect those chord changes, then we can go ahead and add to this single downstrum to create more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song. All right, guys. So, for strumming today, it does look kind of like a longer strumming pattern, but I promise you it's really easy. All you have to do is understand how to count it. Okay, so what you see at the top of the screen right now is one measure. We're going to be counting this in a 16th note count. So, it's going to sound like this. We have 1 E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a 1 E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a down down up down down up 1 and 2 and a three E and four and a All right. So that's one measure or four beats that we're going to kind of visit throughout this song. For some parts of this song, you are going to actually play the entire strumming pattern for one chord. So, an example of that would be the very intro of the song. We're starting here on our C chord. You play the whole thing. Down, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up. Then you would go to your F chord. Same thing. Down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up. Back to C. back to F. All right. So, the reason I say that this song can be a little bit more difficult is because we are not going to be playing this pattern through one time per chord throughout the whole thing. In fact, most of the song we are going to actually have to split this measure in half. So, I'm going to go ahead and add a dotted line here in the middle. And what this represents is kind of like the halfway point where we want to kind of change chords and how we want to think about the strumming. Okay, so let's go ahead and take a look at that first verse. Here's a good example of where we're going to have to split this measure in half and play two different chords within the same measure. So basically on our C chord, all you would do is play only the left half. So we have C down up. Then where this vertical line is, you would change chords to your next chord, which is G, and finish out the rest of the measure. Down, up, down, down, up. All right. So, without stopping, C G. All right. Same thing with the next two chords. We've got a minor on the left and then E7 on the right. A minor, E7. All right. So, it's important for you to realize the strumming pattern is not changing throughout this song, but where we're changing chords is what's changing. Okay. So, again, this top pattern that you see is all one measure, but sometimes we are going to have to split it in half. So, let's go ahead and put that in context with the verse without stopping. We've got C down down up G A minor to E7 to F to G to C. All right. And then within this split, sometimes we're going to have to split it even more. Okay. So, um, one of the good things about this song is that once you learn one kind of like phrase, it does repeat itself a lot. So, you know, it's kind of easy in that sense, but where we just were with our C here, we're going to go from our A minor to our G pretty quickly. And so, each of these is only going to get one beat. So, A minor gets the third beat and G gets the fourth beat. So, what we're going to do with that is on the right half of this pattern, we're again going to have to split it in half again. Okay? So, with beat three and beat four, we're just going to do a down up. So we have three and a four and a. Okay. And that's what we're going to do with these two chords on a minor. We've got three and a switch to G, four and. All right. So let's take a look at that line. A better place to play. We're going from C to A minor to G. And this is all going to be within one measure. Okay. C is going to get the first half. Down up. And then A minor and G are splitting again for three and four. A minor 3 and a G 4 and All right. So hopefully the way that I've explained this makes sense. Um but basically at the end of that phrasing there, we've got a better place to play A minor G. From there, you would go back to that split half and half measure again just like we did. C to G to A minor, E7 to F to G. Here comes that split again. C down, down, down, up, A minor, and G. All right, so only on that line C, A minor, G, it's going to go a little bit faster. Otherwise, throughout the rest of the song, or most of the rest of the song, you do just want to split this strumming pattern in half. Okay, so let's go ahead and go through an entire verse without stopping with some singing so you can hear how it all comes together. your mind. Don't you know you might find a better place to play? Quick switch said that you never been. All the things that you see slowly fade away down up down. All right. So, like I said earlier, all of the verses follow this chord order and this progression and the way that it's split up. So, once you get it for this verse, you can apply it for the rest of the verses as well as the choruses also follow this chord order. Okay. So, now let's go ahead and take a look at that pre chorus. Um, again, we're going to do the split measure. We've got F for the first half. Down, down, down, up to F minor. Down, up, down, down, down, up. And then here on this C, we're going to have the whole pattern. Okay? So the whole measure down up down up down again. F minor half C hole. down down down up down up down down up down down. And then again for the next two chords we're going to have a full measure. G is down down E7. Right here we're going to go back to the split measure. A minor, G, and then F gets a full measure, and then G is going to get a full measure, and it's actually going to repeat for two measures. So on the second measure of the G repeated chord, that's where I would use the all downstrum. So you would go 1 and 2 and 3 and four and. All right. So that precourse is going to be a little bit different for the rest of this song. Make sure that you take note of which chords are split measures and then which chords are going to be played for the entire measure, like on just one chord. I actually do have all of this notated on my printable guide that's available on my Patreon page. So if you're already confused, I would definitely recommend checking it out. But I have all of it really clearly labeled there. But let's go ahead and go through that pre chorus now. So I start a revolution from my full measure here cuz you send the bra ahead into my head. Split sip outside the summer time. Full measures stand up beside the fireplace. Take that look from off your face. Split. You ain't never full here. Hard out. And then G gets one full measure. Down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down. And you're building up to the chorus. All right. So that G, it's going to be played twice. The first time is the full measure the way we've been playing it. And the second time, I would recommend, like I said, all downstrums. That really builds up the swell into the chorus. So, if you can do it, I would definitely recommend it. And the chorus here, we're gonna go back to, like I said, exactly how we played the verse as far as the guitar part goes with the split strum. Okay. And so, Sally can't wait. She knows it's too late as we're walking on. Split split soul slide away but don't look back in anger. I heard you sing. All right. So you can see there the chorus and the verse share the way the same way the guitar goes. And then we went through the pre chorus. So those are basically the two different parts of the song. like the verse and the chorus is going to be played one way and then the pre chorus is going to be played another way. We've gone through both of those. Now, the one thing you might have noticed is we are going rather slow. So, if you want to play this with the original tempo, it is going to have to be sped up quite a bit. So, that's just going to take some practice on your end to make sure that you have first of all the coordination of all of the strumming down. And then you want to make sure you know where those split measures are happening and where you want to change those chords. And then once you're really clear on all of that, then you want to slowly start just speeding it up until you get to full tempo. Could take a little bit of practice on your end, but definitely just make sure to pause the video and understand how this strumming pattern is counted and how we're going to apply it. Um, again, all of this is laid out on my guide that I have on my Patreon. So, if you need more help with that, I would definitely recommend looking there. But this is the strumming that I would recommend for the song. All right, guys. So, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really look over the strumming pattern, understand how to count it, get it memorized, know where those split measures are going to be happening, things like that. Um, but once you have all of that under your belt, we can put together everything we've learned in this tutorial today to play through the song. One, two, ready, go. Step inside the eye of your mind. Don't you know you might find a better place to play or have fun jamming up to learn the song with me? Yeah. 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 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, see you over there.

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