Drop Dead by Olivia Rodrigo Tutorial/Lesson
Drop Dead
G, C, D, Em
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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 Drop [music] Dead off of Olivia Rodrigo's You Seen Pretty Sad For a Girl So In Love album on the guitar. And today I am featuring my Journey Instruments OF660 guitar, which is one of the coolest guitars that I own because you can actually fold it in half and take it with you. So it makes for a super cool travel guitar. So if you are interested in this model or any of their other collapsible guitars, I will link them 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. guys, you only need to know four different chord shapes to play through this song and we'll start with our G major, which [music] 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 [music] on screen, I do cover how to do that in my free beginner series right here on YouTube. So make sure to check that out right here. The next chord shape is our C major. >> [music] >> We also have our D major. >> [music] >> And the last chord shape is our E minor. >> [music] >> And those are the only four chords you need to know to play through this song. So go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as need to really look over these chord shapes, get them memorized and also practice transitioning back and forth between them cuz it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you. And if this is skill you're currently struggling with, I do have a practice with me chord transitions playlist right here on my YouTube channel where I help you build up the speed of your chord transitions in real time together. So if you're interested in that, I will link that playlist in the corner here. Otherwise, we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would suggest for this song. All right. 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 down strum 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. I know that [singing and music] the bar closes at 11. But I hope [singing and music] you never finish that beer. 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 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 if you're interested. But once you've done this and you're comfortable with where those chord transitions are going to be, then we can go ahead and add to this to create more of a full strumming pattern you can use for this song. All right guys, so I have two different strumming patterns I wanted to show you today. You can use either one to play through the entire song or you can combine both, which is what I like to do. So I wanted to start out with the one that I think is a little bit easier. So as you can see on the top of your screen, we are going to be counting this in an eighth note count. So it's going to sound like this. We have one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down up up down up down down up up down up. All right, this is a super common strumming pattern that you can use for so many songs and it works really great with this one as well. So basically what we're going to do is we're going to take this pattern and for most of the song, we're going to play it through two times on our G chord followed by one time for each of our C and our D chords, okay? And that's going to be basically the structure of almost the entire song except for the very end of the bridge, but we'll talk about that in just one second. So let's go ahead and look at verse one. We're starting here on our G major. What you want to do is play through this pattern two times on G major. So we have down down [music] up down up twice. Then we would switch to our [music] C major chord, just play it once down down [singing] up up down up and then switch to your D major chord down down up up down up. >> [music] >> All right, and that's basically the entire song right there. So we've got G twice >> [music] >> to C to D down [music] down up up down up down up up down up. >> [music] >> All right, good. [music] We do need to speed it up quite a bit because this song does go a little bit faster than we're going right now. So more at full tempo, it will sound like this. We've got one, two, ready, go. Down down up >> [music] >> up down up twice to C to D G >> [music] >> two measures to C You got it. [music] I know [singing] that the bar closes at 11. But [music] I hope [singing] you never finish that beer. All [music] right, and you can play all the verses just like that. Again, you can put this strumming pattern into the chorus as well. One night I was bored in bed, stopped you on the internet. [singing and music] It's feminine intuition. The stars had a vision of us standing like this. >> [music] >> All right. And like I said, this strumming pattern can be played for the whole song. The bridge is going to be the same except for the very end. We are going to see our E minor chord for the first and only time in this song. So that's going to replace that G major there. So we're starting on G two measures to C to D and then we go to E minor, okay? For two measures and then C and then D. All right. Pisces and a Gemini, but I think we might [music and singing] go really nice together if you let me stay the night. [music] Well, I think I might just have to stay forever. And something I wanted to point out really quick, if you're looking at the guide that's on my Patreon page, you might see some of these chords have a little X next to them. That's just my way of signaling to you guys that I would suggest doing kind of like a strum stop. So basically what we would do there is strum the chord really fast and then [music] immediately mute your strings by taking the side of your hand and just kind of slapping the strings. You almost want to do it in like one motion. All right. It's like a really quick mute. Think we might just have to stay forever. All right. So you'll see that little symbol throughout the song. So that's just what the little X means. And if you've gotten to this point in the video and you're really struggling with, you know, the downs and the ups and the coordination and things like that, that just means that you need to work a little bit more on your muscle memory. That's the only way you'll be able to play through the song and then sing on top of it. So if that's a skill you're currently struggling with, I do have a practice with me strumming series on my channel as well and we do cover this exact strumming pattern. So I'll make sure to link that in the corner if you need it. Again, we go through that in real time and I help you build up the speed of this strumming pattern together as you build that muscle memory. But basically once you have that under your muscle memory, you should be able to put the singing on top of it and you can play through the entire song with just this strumming pattern. However, I like to kind of vary up my cover by adding a second strumming pattern. So let's go ahead and talk about strumming pattern two next. All right guys, so for the second strumming pattern, as you can see, it's also pretty simple. It's just eight down strums. We are still counting this in an eighth note rhythm. So it's going to sound like this. We have one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down down down down [singing] down down. All right. Super simple, just all eight down strums. But the reason I think this strumming pattern can be a little bit trickier is because we are going to add some accents as well as apply some palm muting. Now these are two techniques that if you can get them under your repertoire, it's really good to have as a rhythm guitar specifically because you'll see how much it can really dress up your covers. So let's first of all go ahead and go over this rhythm. Let's put our G chord on. Again, the structure of the song is not changing. So we still have G for two measures, which means we're going to play this pattern twice and then C for one measure, D for one measure, okay? So we've got G one and two [music and singing] and three and four and twice. Then we've [music] got C major one [singing] and two and three and four and to D. >> [music] >> All right. So the basic strumming pattern is pretty simple, but as you can kind of already hear, the notes all kind of come together when we don't do anything to differentiate between them. So that's where our first technique is going to come in handy, which is our accents. So basically accents are just a way you can emphasize certain strums within a strumming pattern to make them stand out against all the other strums. So I'm going to go ahead and mark some of these down arrows and these are the ones that I want you to accent. So when we're accenting, you can think about it kind of like with dynamics. So the accented strums, you want to make them louder >> [music] >> and a little bit more with like oomph behind them, okay? And then the non-accented strums, you can kind of just do more of a lighter strum and just kind of like keep your wrist really loose for all of these, okay? So you want to go one and [singing] two and [music] three and four and Another thing you can think about is for accented strums, you want to strum all the strings with a little extra emphasis. >> [music] >> But for the non-accented strums, you can kind of concentrate just more on some of these top strings and the wrist motion's going to be a little bit smaller, okay? So try that with me with the accents. We've got one and two and three and [music] four and one and two and three and four and to [singing and music] C to D. >> [music] >> All right, so you might notice right before my accented strums, I'm always lifting my strumming hand just a little higher to give it a little bit extra like leverage to do that accent, okay? So again, accents provide a sense of rhythm to kind of drive the song forward. And then the second skill I wanted to talk about was palm muting. So palm muting is a way that you can play guitar that kind of dampens the sound of the strings to help the vocals stand out. So basically, what you want to do there is you're going to take the side of your hand with your pick in it. And the side of your palm here, you want to rest it on your guitar strings pretty close to the bridge of your guitar. So your hand wants to be pretty far back. The farther up it is, then the more it's just going to sound crunchy. So you want to go pretty far back so you can still distinguish the different chords. All right. But you can hear there how it kind of sounds a little bit more muted, a little more dampened. So basically, if you can apply this palm mute in with your accents, it'll really make the guitar sound just more kind of have that like punk pop kind of sound that Olivia Rodrigo songs tend to have. So let me show you what it sounds like with both our accents and our palm mute, okay? We've got G 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and twice. >> [music] >> So hopefully, you can still hear the accented strums. But I'm adding that palm mute in >> [music] >> to dampen the sound of the strings, okay? I know [singing] that the bar closes at 11. But I hope [music and singing] you never finish that beer. >> [music] >> All right. So that was just an example of the verse. I think we do need to speed it up still just quite a little bit more to get it at full tempo. But again, this is the second strumming option where you could use it to play through the entire song if you wanted. Another option that you can do because the song is so driven by dynamics, is you can take the palm mute out and still leave those accents in and that'll make your guitar part sound louder. So for example, when we're going from verse 1 into the first chorus, I like to palm mute verse 1 and then let the chorus ring out. So you know [singing] all [music] the words to just like heaven. And I know why [singing] he wrote them now that you're standing right [singing] here. >> [music] >> All right, so that was the end of verse 1 with the palm mute. I'm going to take the palm mute out and go into the chorus with the exact same strumming pattern. Oh, one night I was bored [singing] in bed and stalked you on [music] the internet. Damn intuition. Always had a vision of us standing like this. >> [singing] >> All right, so you can hear how the difference is. All we did was take the palm mute out and keep the whole down strum pattern going. So you can hear how that plays a difference in the dynamics. These are all things that you can play around with on your own. But if you want my suggestions on how to play through this song, I will mark all of that on my play through that's on Patreon. But either way, these are the two strumming rhythms that I would recommend using for this song. Or of course, as always, you can totally make up your own that you feel like fits. So again, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really look over both of these strumming rhythms. Make sure you get them under your belt and you can play them fast enough to get through this song. Again, if muscle memory is something you're currently working on to be able to sing on I do have both of these strumming rhythms under my practice with me chord transition series. So again, I'll link those videos in the description box if you need them. But once you're comfortable with everything we've learned in this tutorial today, we can put all of it together to play through the song. 1 2 ready, go. I [singing and music] know that the bar closes at 11. >> [music] >> But I [singing] hope you never finish that beer. [music] Want to have fun jamming out to the rest of this 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 for it 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, [music and singing] but it's just as fun and easy to play. See you over there. Bye.