Far Away by Nickelback Tutorial/Lesson
Far Away
C, Gsus4, Am, F/C, D, A, Bm, G
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Video transcript
foreign my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Far Away by Nickelback on the guitar 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 now really quick before we jump right into it it is important to know that your guitar should be in a half step down tuning so we are not in our regular standard tuning like usual so basically if you don't know how to tune your guitar half step down I do have a video right here that shows you the easiest way to do that but when all said and done you should have your string sound like this E flat a flat d flat g flat B flat and E flat alright so I will be teaching the rest of this tutorial with your strings in a half step down tuning so just wanted to make sure that you guys all knew that alright guys so we only have eight chord shapes to play through this song today and we're going to start with our C major which looks like this and sounds like this foreign 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 in my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out the next chord is our G suspended four and all you want to do is take your ring and your middle finger and move them each up one string foreign after that we have our a minor chord again just your ring and your middle finger have to move for that one after that we have our F over c chord next is our D chord we also have our a major chord we have our B minor chord and then the last chord shape you need to know is your G chord foreign chords you need to know to play this song so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you and if you're someone who needs a little bit of extra help with transitioning those chords fast enough I would suggest checking out my practice with me Series where we build the skill together in real time but with that being said let's go ahead and talk about the strumming for this song Alright guys so like I always say if you are brand new to guitar or you're somebody who struggles with singing and playing guitar at the same time the first thing I would suggest you do is go through the entire song with a practice pattern which is just going to be a single down strum and you want to do that for every time you see a chord change throughout the song while you're singing through it this is just going to really help you recognize where those chords are changing and it'll help you with that singing and playing process down the line so here's a really quick example of what that would look like with the first verse time is misused mistakes all right you basically want to just do the whole song with the single Downstream and really make sure you know where those chords are going to be transitioning before you move on and it's actually something you do right now if you check out my patreon page I do have this whole guide available to download and print out to make this whole process a little bit easier for you um but with that being said let's go ahead and talk about the full strumming pattern alright guys so our strumming pattern today is not going to be too difficult as you can see it's just down down up so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk a little bit more about this Rhythm all right guys so we are working with an eighth note rhythm today so when you're counting we have one two three four one two three four and one two three four and down down down down up and that's the whole pattern and it can be applied for the entire song so basically what you want to do is you want to play this pattern one time through for each chord throughout the song except in the pre-chorus you would want to repeat this from pattern two times for each of those chords so let's just go through a quick example together if I bring up first one you can see we're starting with our c chord so you would go down down down up to four down down down down up then you go to a minor down down down down up and then F over C down down down down up all right so like I said apply it one time for each chord all right so without stopping it would sound like this down down down up down down down down up a minor you got it this time this place mistakes too long too late all right and like I said you could apply that for the whole song in the pre-chorus you would want to repeat this strumming pattern twice per chord so we're starting with our D chord here we have down down down down up two times to F over C repeat it then you go into the chorus and then again one time per chord right now something else I wanted to kind of you know throw your way if you're somebody who wants to experiment a little bit I am going to add another up strum here on the end of the one okay so that's going to change our Rhythm a little bit so now with this extra up strum we would have one and two three four and one and two three four and down up down down down up down up down down up now everything we just practice with the you know initial strumming pattern this strumming pattern can apply as well so basically you would play this pattern one time through per chord throughout the song again repeat it two times per chord in the pre-chorus but the reason I wanted to kind of show you guys this is because it's a really easy way to dress up your strumming to make it sound a little bit different and basically all you would do is add this extra up strum just kind of throughout your cover when you're playing it so if you were to use it exclusively it would sound more like this now we have a c suspended a minor F over C right so again sounds just the same except we're adding that extra up strum what I would suggest you do is play the initial strumming pattern just that down down down up on the first chord and then add that extra up strum in the next chord so G suspended four would have down up down down down up then you go back and forth between the two so a minor is back to down down down down up F over C would get the extra up down up down down down so basically if you do it back and forth like that it can really dress up the song and make the guitar part sound a lot more interesting so if I were to alternate between the two it would sound more like this C G suspended a minor F over C this time this is too long too late make you wait all right and that's just an example of how you could vary it up like if you're playing through the song and you feel like doing that extra upstrom I totally suggest just going for it I think varying up your strumming pattern is a really easy way to kind of dress up how the guitar sounds whenever you're singing but basically this is the strumming pattern that I would recommend playing for the entire song like I said it works throughout so in the pre-chorus just one left cause you know you know that I love you I've loved you all alone all right so it can go through the entire song and I think it sounds great however there is a very pretty iconic picking tab that you can hear kind of throughout the song so I wanted to cover that as well so let's go ahead and talk about the picking alright guys so again just make sure to pause the video and take as much time as you need to memorize and kind of internalize this strumming pattern play around with you know keeping in that extra upstrom or omitting it in certain Chords it's really a lot of fun to kind of make the song your own by figuring out how you like to strum and of course as I always say this is just a suggestion so if you have a different strumming pattern that you would prefer to use I say go for it yeah basically once you have this down we can break down that Tab and guys really quick before we move on I wanted to take a second to kind of just sponsor myself in this video if you are enjoying this and are finding it helpful please 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 of the new tutorials it really does help my channel grow and get my videos out to more eyes to help more people learn how to play the guitar and another thing I wanted to suggest if you are somebody who's struggling a little bit is to check out my patreon page over there I have exclusive perks for all of my patrons that can help you learn your guitar faster easier than ever before including printable guitar guides customizable backing tracks you can vote on what songs you want to see me Teach here on my channel and you can even send me videos if you're having trouble with anything and I will send you video responses back so there's lots of exclusive perks that you can unlock by becoming a patron so if you'd like to get your hands on some of those perks as well as help support this channel then make sure to check that out I will link it in the description box down below alright guys so let's go ahead and break down this tab that you hear throughout the song now first of all if you don't know how to read the tab that I have at the top of the screen here then I would suggest checking out my how to read guitar tabs video I did do a fun little interactive video here that helps you learn the basics of how to read tabs so go ahead and check that out first and then come back and we can break this down but basically it's actually a lot more simple than it might look or sound what I want you to do is first of all on your left hand we're just going to start with our regular chord shape so we're starting with that c chord shape on our left hand and then on our right hand this is where it's going to get a little bit trickier but it's not too bad what I want you to do is put your thumb on that a string because that's our bass string in the C chord and then I want you to use your pointer and your middle finger and put those on the G and the B strings respectively all right and they're just going to kind of stay here for most of this tab so what I want you to do is we're going to pick our thumb first then our open G string then our B string with our first finger down okay so we have and then come back and pick that open string again so we have thumb pointer middle pointer so that part's pretty easy once we get back to this you know hammer on Section what I want you to do is when we're coming back to pick that b string with our middle finger again all you want to do is take your first finger off so you're picking it open and then as it's ringing you want to kind of hammer your pointer finger back onto the string so that you can hear both notes just like that then take your pointer finger back to that g string open and then B string all right so the whole c chord is foreign hopefully you can hear the song kind of come together so one more time nice and so once you get that c chord down go ahead and pause and practice that as much as you need because it is going to be basically the same for the next two measures as well so if we're moving on to our G suspended four chord all you have to do is take off your ring finger and move your middle finger up one string like I know G suspended fours um like this with the Fret but you can actually just take your ring finger off all right and so basically on your right hand you're doing the exact same thing we're picking that a string with our thumb open G first finger on B back to open so and then again the hammer on and everything is exactly the same as a c chord open hammer on open one all right so for G suspended we have good a minor is going to look just the same so now in your left hand you want to fret your a minor chord just like normal and then on our right hand it's the same exact thing we have open a with our thumb pointer finger on G string b g and then again same thing we're going to open hammer on and then two one so a minor we have so just pausing really quick there you can see c g suspended four and a minor all kind of look the same as far as your right hand goes we have C hammer on move over to G suspended ham run then to a minor hammer on foreign okay so they're all following the same format so once you get it for one chord it shouldn't be too hard to apply it to the others now when we get to our F over c chord that's where it's going to be a little bit different okay so normally your F over C you would fret like this on your left hand but I want you to actually take your pinky off and move your ring finger down one string okay because those are the only three strings that we need to use for this tab so you should friend it like this it'll make it easier and I'll show you why in a second on your right hand your pointer and your middle finger will still be on the G and B strings but you're going to move your thumb up to the D string all right and so it starts the same thumb pointer middle pointer three two one two but here's where it's a little bit different before we do that hammer on like the other measures I want you to actually put your pinky down first on the third fret of the B string all right then we're going to do what's called a pull off we're going to take your pinky and kind of flick it off of the string so again you're only picking it once on your right hand but you should be able to hear both tones all right so once you have that pull off then you should look like this and now you want to do that hammer on so take your pointer finger off open string and then hammer on okay so we have F over C pull off hammer on all right so this one might be a little bit more difficult than the other measures oh you got to have like kind of strong fingers for this so if you're struggling with it just make sure to practice it a little bit every day and build up that finger strength and that finger dexterity but basically that's the whole Tab and you can repeat that for the entire song anytime you hear that guitar tab kind of come in you can use it so basically all together without stopping it sounds like this we have c g s foreign all right and it is going to go a little bit faster if you wanted to play this at the original tempo of the original song so it sounded more like this time all right and basically I would suggest using this kind of picking tab portion whenever you do like those choruses it also sounds really good during the bridge so basically that's where I would use it but all of this is obviously very optional if you wanted to just stick with strumming that would sound really great with this song as well so go ahead and pause the video and just look at this tab as long as you need to to get it really get it under your belt and then once you have that down we can put all of this stuff together to play through the song miss you mistakes too long too late Wanna Have Fun jamming through 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 Fast Track and play along guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a 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 but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye