Don't Stop Believin' by Journey Tutorial/Lesson
Don't Stop Believin'
E, B, C#m, A, G#m
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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 Stop Believing by Journey on my journey instruments of 422 travel guitar I could not miss out on the opportunity to teach a journey song on my journey guitar which actually collapses and folds in half it's super cool really great for traveling so I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box if you're interested I wanted to give a huge shout out and thank you to my patrons for voting on this song is this month's Patron picks if you want a little bit of voting power in the songs you see me Teach here on my channel make sure to check out my patreon page I'll link that down below 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 only need to know five different chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our E 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 for how to do that in my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out right here the next chord shape is our B major after that we have our csharp minor we also have our a major and then the last chord shape is our G Shar minor and those are the five chords you need to know to play through this 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'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier and I know this song has a ton of bar chords in it so if bar chords is something you're currently struggling with I would definitely recommend checking out my barcord miniseries right here on YouTube I will link that in the ey card right here um but once you get those chords under your belt we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that you can use for this song all right guys so like I always say if you are 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 play through the whole thing with a single downum on each chord change as you sing through the song and you want to just take this time to really get used to where those chords are going to be transitioning what word you're on what syllable you're singing things like that so here's a quick example of what that would look like for the beginning just a small town girl living in a lonely world she took a midnight train going anywhere all right so you can kind of already tell just by doing that that some of these chords are not going to align with a specific word you're kind of changing chords in between words things like that and this is all stuff that you'll figure out as you do this practice strum and this actually something you do right now if you check out my patre 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 get used to this single down strum then we can build on that and do a more full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so the strumming pattern I would recommend for this song is super simple we're just going to be in an eighth note count and we're going to basically do every single beat so we have 1 and 2 and three and four and 1 and two and three and four and down up down up down up down up down up this is basically one of the most simplistic strumming patterns that you can play on guitar it's super easy to count we're just going back and forth between down up and it's kind of going to mimic that like piano kind of drummy sound that it has um so basically what you want to do is we're going to play this pattern through one time per chord throughout the song so for example we're starting on our E major chord you would go one and 2 and three and four and to your b 1 and 2 and three and four four and C Shar minor 1 and 2 and 3 and four and to a all right super simple you would apply that for the entire song um but with a guitar when you're doing kind of a more drummy pattern like this it can start to get a little like muddy and sound a little like the same so what we're going to do is we're going to add strategically some accents into this strumming pattern so I'm going to turn a few of these arrows green and as you can see this is where we're going to add an accent so what an accent is is whenever you're strumming you want to kind of emphasize these green Beats you're just going to strum with a little bit of extra emphasis on those beats only so we have one and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and if you accent those beats you'll hear how it kind of matches the drum went throughout the song This is especially apparent in the chorus so let me just go ahead and bring up the chorus we're starting with our a chord we're going to go down up down up down up down up down up down up all right and when you put it together with the chord changes and everything you'll hear how the accents come on the symbols of the drum on the guitar so we have a down up down up down up down up e down up down up down up down strangers waiting up and down the PO Shadows searching in the night all right if you're familiar with my other tutorials you'll know that I add accents a lot into my strumming rhythms I think it just really helps kind of make the guitar less monotonous however we are going to be accenting an upstrom which is a little bit more unfamiliar if you watch my other tutorials so just make sure to take as much time as you need to practice those accents and try to get them in there if you can do that you can actually apply this strumming Rhythm for the entire song and it kind of mimics the piano part throughout um one thing you might have noticed is when we accent those beats down up down up down up down up um it kind of starts sounding like the Fon strum down down up up down up so if that's a strumming pattern and rhythm that you're more familiar with you could totally apply that for this song as well we have down down up up down up switch one time for each chord and it would work for the entire song too just a small town girl living in a lonely world all right so you could do the island strum you could also do the full strumming pattern for the entire song um sometimes kind of just go back and forth depending on how I'm feeling and that's the great thing about playing guitar and making these songs your own is whenever you get the basic Rhythm down you can always feel free to change around the strumming so that it matches the way that you want to play or the way that you're naturally feeling it and if you do that it'll be so much easier to sing on top of so anyways those are my suggestions for how to strum this song and you could apply it for the entire song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get those strumming rhythms under your belt whether you want to do the full down up struming pattern or the island strum or if you want to add those Accents in or not it's all totally optional feel free to take what I've taught you here in this video and just make it your own to whatever you think sounds good um these are always as I always say just suggestions but um once you have the strumming under your belt then we can go ahead and put together everything we've learned to play through the song one two ready go just a small town girl in a Lon world she took the midnight train going anywh Want to 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 FasTrack and playalong guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave that 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