Every Rose Has Its Thorn
G, Cadd9, D, Em, C
Download Printable Guitar Guide
Unlock with Patreon
Watch play along cover
Unlock with Patreon
Are you new to playing the guitar? Watch my free Beginner Series where I show you all of the basics. You'll be playing your first songs in minutes!
Video transcript
hey everyone my name is ellen and today i'm going to be showing you guys how to play every rose has its thorn by poison on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you'd like to learn and really quick before we jump into the tutorial i wanted to take a minute to thank today's sponsor burroughs guitars if you're looking for a quality beginner guitar that is both durable and beautiful while still having an affordable price tag consider a burroughs designed in and named after the five boroughs of new york city these are the perfect starter guitar for anyone excited to begin their music journey not only are they super easy and fun to play but these guitars are the best you'll find at this inexpensive price point with six different models and several finishes to choose from you'll be sure to find the one that fits your personality and musical tastes perfectly best of all all burrows guitars ship directly and exclusively from adorama a trusted site for all your creative needs so if playing guitar is something you or a loved one have been considering check out the links in the description box and get started today so this song is going to be super beginner friendly however i will be adding a few like optional challenges in there if that's something that you want to tackle but first of all let's go ahead and talk about this song you will need your guitar in a half step down tuning and if you're not familiar with that i will go over how to do that in my chords section um with that you do not need a capo to play this in the original song and i have five chord shapes to show you today they're all open chords no bars so it's really great for beginners as well as two strumming patterns and a little bit of variation that you can add to those so let's go ahead and jump into what those chords look like right guys so before we zoom in and look at these chord shapes that you need to know for this song i did just want to cover really quick that you will need to have your guitar in a half step down tuning if that's something brand new to you and you don't know how to do that i will link a video i made right here about the easiest way to tune your guitar a half step down but when you're done tuning it your guitar should sound like this all right so instead of e a d g b e it's e flat a flat d flat g flat b flat e flat all right with that being said let's go ahead and zoom in and look at these chords all right so like i said there are only five chord shapes to play through this entire song and we're going to start with our g which looks like this and sounds like this and by the way if you do not know how to read these chord charts that you're seeing on screen i do cover that in my beginner series episode 3 so i'll link that video right here if you need it our next chord is going to be our c add 9 chord which looks like this and sounds like this next is our d chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our e minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord shape you need to know is our c chord which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the five chord shapes you need to know to play through this song alright guys so before we continue on just make sure to pause the video and take a few moments to memorize these chord shapes if they're new to you as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them i always say this but having these chord transitions down is really going to make the strumming a lot easier so just make sure to pause the video and take a few moments to do that i also cover how to transition chords a little bit faster in my beginner series in episode six so i will link that right here for those of you who need it but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming patterns i'd suggest to use for this song so those of you familiar with any of my other tutorials will know that i always start you out the same which is with a practice pattern which is a simple down strum for every chord change i always suggest beginners start here or people who are having trouble singing and playing at the same time because this is a great way to just get yourself used to the song and really taking the time to focus on what word you're singing when you're doing those chord changes and things like that so let me go ahead and just put the chorus right here up on screen as you can see it has all the lyrics and above some of these words is the new chord shape that you're going to play so basically that just represents what word you're singing when you're changing chords so let's go ahead and all play through this chorus together and i'll count us in one two ready go every rose has its floor just like every night has it's done just like all right nice so even just from doing this course you can already tell that some of these chords are going to be held out a little bit longer and some of these chords are going to change a little bit quicker this is all stuff that you'll figure out how to do when you go through the entire song and just do the single down strum you can actually do this right now i have this whole song guide available on my patreon page for free so i will link it up in this i card as well as in the description down below the video but go ahead and check that out print it out and go through this whole song with just a single down strum to make sure you know where those chord changes are and then once you have that under your belt we can move into strumming pattern one all right now if you are a beginner or coming from my beginner series i wanted to start you guys out with this very first strumming pattern as you can see it's just eight down strums followed by an up strum and the rhythm is going to sound a little something like this now if you are coming from my beginner series this should look pretty familiar for you but basically what we're going to do is take this strumming pattern and play it one time through for each chord and sometimes we're going to actually be switching chords in the middle of the pattern but i will cover all of that in a second so let's go ahead and just practice with our g chords on let's just get that rhythm down okay i'll count us in and you jump in whenever you feel comfortable one two ready go down down down down down down down down all right awesome all right so like i said we're going to be applying the strumming pattern one time through for every chord change so let me go ahead and put the verse chords up here we're just going to go back and forth from g to c at nine and you would play this strumming pattern one time through for each of those chords so on g we would have one two three four five six seven eight up switch to c add nine one two three four five six seven eight up all right back and forth one two three four five six seven eight all right nice and so one last little thing i wanted to include in here is i'm gonna go ahead and underline some of these down strums and all that's gonna represent is places where i want you to kind of accent those down strums so basically instead of just strumming you know kind of lightly you want to kind of add a little bit more of a energy to those down strums and what that's going to do is going to really drive the rhythm so we have one two three four five six seven eight up all right down down down down down down down nice and if you can apply those accented beats to the entire song it's really going to just kind of bring everything together and make the rhythm just a lot more straightforward when you're playing so let's go ahead and put the chorus back up on screen and basically i just want you to play this with me and i'll sing through it and you can kind of hear how it all comes together i'll count us in one two ready go all right now i'm going to take a little quick break right here because right here when we get to the next line you'll see that the chord changes are going to happen a little bit faster so basically what we want to do is we're going to change chords in the middle of this strumming pattern so i'm going to put a little vertical line through the middle of this strumming pattern and that vertical line is going to represent where we're going to switch chords okay so in this next line we have g d c g okay so um on the left side we're gonna go from g for the first three down strums one two three to our d chord and finish out the rest of the pattern one two three four five hand then same thing for c one two three and then g down down down down down up all right so basically we're just taking this exact same strumming pattern but we're going to just split it kind of in the middle there to do our chord transitions a little bit faster so that line altogether would sound like this all right so in case you can't hear it i am still accenting those same beats so you want to keep those accents in so let's do that together one two ready go g d c g again g d c g all right then you would just go ahead and go back to the full storing pattern to finish out the course all right so basically if you are a beginner and this is all you can handle because this is already a lot of strumming um then go ahead you can play through the entire song with just this strumming pattern it's going to sound actually really fun and really rhythmic so if that's where you're at and this is all you can handle right now totally understand so you can actually play the whole song right now with just this strumming pattern it will sound great but for those of you who want a little bit more of a challenge i do have a second strumming pattern to show you and this one can be a little bit more varied so if you are someone confident in your rhythm or you just want to challenge yourself go ahead and stay tuned for strumming pattern two all right so strumming pattern two as you can see is going to be down down up up down up down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this all right guys now that you heard the rhythm let's go ahead and practice it together so i want you to put your g chords on and i'm going to count us in and i just want you again to just jump in whenever you start to feel that rhythm one two ready go down down up up down up down up down up up down up down down up up down up down up down up up down up down nice so if you're having trouble getting that rhythm under your belt go ahead and rewind and just practice that again on your own a few times until you can kind of internalize the rhythm a little bit more this one is a little more difficult because it is a 16th note strumming pattern so again if this is too advanced for you you can always go back to strumming pattern one and play through the song however for those of you who want the extra challenge i will tell you that this is basically a basic strumming pattern that you can use for the whole song so now that we've gone ahead and played through it let's put some chord changes in there so as a strumming pattern one we're going to play through this pattern one time through for each chord so if we go to the beginning of the chorus we'd have our g which goes into c add nine so again we're gonna go on our g down down up up down up down up then you go to your c add nine same four all right so if you can do those core transitions then you can kind of hear the song come together a little bit more so let's again go through the chorus i'll put that up on screen right now so we're gonna go down down up up down up down all right and again right here i'm to just take a little pause and what we're going to do now is for instances in this song when we're changing our chords a little bit faster you will need to again split this strumming pattern in half so again let me just put a vertical line midway through this strumming pattern and again that's going to represent where we're switching chords whenever those chords are going a little bit faster so for example on this line every cowboy sings a sad sad song we're going from g to d to c to g so basically where this line is the first two down strums is going to be our g chord down down then you want to finish out the strumming pattern on your next chord which is d up up down up down up go back to your next chord c down down and then end on g up up down up down all right so again it will take a little bit of practice to not only get this rhythm but then also practice changing chords in the middle of it so all together that line's gonna sound like this all right so again you will need to probably practice this a little bit pause the video practice that on your own um and then again just to finish out the chorus you'd go back to playing this whole strumming pattern through once for each of these chords all right awesome so something i want to point out about the second strumming pattern is that what i'm giving you right now on screen is kind of like a basic pattern and what i mean by that is you could use this strumming pattern to play through the entire song and it would sound really great really close to the original but if you are somebody who's been playing guitar for a while you consider yourself not really a beginner but more kind of on the intermediate side something that you can do right now is practice adding in your own down or up strums to create your own variation of this strumming pattern so let me let you in on a little secret those of us who teach guitar here online a lot of times the strumming patterns that we come up with are just what we are hearing and what we're going to teach you guys but the mark of a great musician is to be able to take information like that and like kind of make it your own and still follow the rules of music right so basically i wanted to take you guys through a few variations and show you how you can make this strumming pattern a little bit more full and sound a little bit more like the original on your own so basically what i want to tell you is that you can add extra down or up strums somewhere in this pattern and as long as you're still on the beat of the metronome click then you should be fine and it'll sound really cool so basically i have this basic strumming pattern that we just went through there are some places where you can add an extra down strum for example so the first variation i want to show you is if we add another down strum to the first little grouping here instead of down down up up down up down up we're going to have down down down up down up down up so the rhythm's gonna go like this down down down up up down up down up all right down down down up so that's just an example if you put the down strum or the extra down strum in the first little grouping for example if you wanted to put the extra down strum in the middle grouping it might sound something like this down down up down up down up down up all right that would be fine too down down up down up down up down up all right or if you wanted to add an extra down strum to the last little grouping that might sound something like this all right so as you can see with all of these variations the basic pattern is still in there somewhere what we're doing is just adding a few extra down strums wherever we see fit you could also do this with up strums you could do this with however you feel the song the most so like if you're listening to this original recording and you're just starting to strum however you strum on your own as long as you're on beat and switching those chords in the right spot you could totally do that and i encourage it so make sure that if you are watching this video and trying to learn this strumming pattern you don't have to be so rigid with it you can definitely add in up strums or down strums wherever you see fit as long as it still fits in with the music okay so another thing to mention is once you get a different variation down if you wanted to include those you don't have to stick to that variation for the entire song either you can also mix and match some of these variations so i kind of wanted to show you what that would look like so these three variations that i just showed you might do something up you know just whatever comes to your mind as long as you're making sure that first beat lands you know on the next you know measure of the music then you should be fine so again this is all pretty advanced i just wanted to let you guys know who are a little bit more confident with your rhythm skills you can branch out and like create your own creative strumming rhythms and i think that's totally fine and i think that actually makes it a little bit easier hopefully for you to sing the song through so i just want to let you know that through my little play through cover i will be kind of incorporating a few variations every now and then just to show you how much it can really add to the overall cover if you plan to sing this for people or perform it at any point in time it really does kind of fill the guitar in a little bit more and keeps it from sounding so stale so um with that being said those are the two strumming patterns and variations that i wanted to show you let's go ahead and put everything that i've taught you together in this video to play the whole song good luck every cowboy one two ready go we both last silently want to have fun playing through the rest of the song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page where i have a free fast track tutorial for how to play through the song and we can jam through it together all of the chords and lyrics and everything strumming patterns will be on the screen so that you can follow along with me and again that is available for free on my patreon page so i will make sure to link that in the description box below as well as in this icard right up here alright guys but that does conclude my video today if it helped you make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on any other new tutorials thank you again to burroughs guitars for sponsoring this video and i also wanted to give a special shout out to my top patrons over on my patreon page all of their names will be on screen right now you guys are awesome as well as a huge thank you to all of my patrons for supporting my channel and making videos just like this one possible 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 what you want to learn next and i'll even do giveaways on there a few times a year so make sure to check it out but i think that ends this tutorial so thank you so much for watching i really hope that it helped and i will see you in my next one bye so you