Fire and Rain by James Taylor Tutorial/Lesson
Fire and Rain
A, Em7, D, E, Gmaj7, Dmaj7, E7, G, Asus2
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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 Fire and Rain by James Taylor on the guitar I want to give a shout out to my patrons for voting on this song as this month's Patron pit so 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 it down below also I'll be featuring my zagger zad adce in this video today so if you're curious about more details about this guitar make sure to check out my links in the description box with that being said here is a quick overview of everything I'm going to be covering in this tutorial today so let's go ahead and get started all right guys so we have nine different chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our a 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 course right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out right here the next chord shape is our E minor 7 after that we have our D major then we have our E major next is our G major 7 and so this is the more traditional fingering for how to play this chord um however because of the size and shape of my hand and my comfortability I actually like to play it by doing my G chord with my ring finger slid down a fret so go ahead and play it however you find most comfortable the next chord shape is our D major 7 and just like our G major 7 chord I actually like to play this by just barring it with my first finger so so again whichever one you're more comfortable with is the one I would suggest playing after that we have our E7 chord then we have our G major chord shape and then the last one is our a suspended two all right and those are the nine 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 really memorize those chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them there are parts of this song where we're going to transition chords a little bit quickly so you want to make sure you have those transitions down before continuing um if this is something that you're currently struggling with I do have an entire practice with me playlist right here on YouTube where we go through this skill in real time together so make sure check that out if you need um but once you have that down we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would suggest for this song all right guys so as I always say if you are a beginner at guitar or you're somebody who struggles with singing while playing at the same time the first thing I would suggest is to bring up the song and go through the whole thing while singing it with a single down strum on every chord change and just take a mental note of where those chords are changing like what lyric You're on whenever that's happening and that'll help with the singing while playing so here's a quick example of what that would look like with verse one just yesterday morning and they let me know you were gone SU and the plans I made put an end to you all right so just from doing that you can tell where there are some places where we're repeating chords for measures and some places where we're not this is all stuff that you'll figure out as you do the single down strum pattern and this 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 for you but once you have that simple strumming down we can talk more about a full strumming pattern that you can use with this song all right guys so this first strumming pattern I wanted to show you is the more simple of the two um as you can see it's just four down strums with an upstrom and this is just half a measure so what you would want to do is repeat this twice for a full measure so you're going to count it like this we have 1 and two and a three and four and a down down up down down down down up all right and basically you can use this pattern for the entire song and you would play the pattern one time per chord so let's go ahead and bring bring up verse one as an example you would play this pattern through 1 and two and a then You' switch to your next chord which is E minor 7 3 and four and D down down down up back to a down down all right so if you put that together and string them along it sounds like this down down down down up down down down down just yesterday morning they let me know you were the made couldn't end to you all right so you can see here on the G major 7 I held that out twice to fill up the full measure so that's how you would use this first strumming pattern throughout the entire song the only place it's going to change a little bit is during the chorus as you can see here we have a little bit of a walk down we go from D to D major 7 to e to E7 to a and the D to D major to e to E7 that's going to go really quickly so what we're actually going to do is put a vertical line in the middle of this pattern and we're going to change chords at this line so in this little walk down here we would play our D chord for the first two strums then D major 7 for the rest of this pattern down down up start over with our E chord down down and then finish it out with our E7 down down up all right so the only time this split pattern is going to apply to the song is right here in this line in the chorus down down up down down down down up then when you get here to the a chord would just go right back down down down down up down down down down up okay so like I said the only time you split is in that one line other than that you would play this pattern through one time per chord except for those times where you would repeat it twice in that instance I actually like to use an entire different strumming pattern but it is a little bit more rhythmically challenging so if you feel comfortable right here with this pattern again like I said you can use it for the entire song however I do want to show you guys what I like to do with the more rhythmic strumming pattern to kind of fill in some of that space all right guys so for the second strumming pattern as you can see it's a little bit longer and we're going to count it with 16th notes so it's going to sound like this 1 E and A 2 E and A 3 E and A 4 E and A down down down down up up down down down down up up down down up now unlike the first pattern this is the entire measure we have all four beads covered in this strumming Rhythm so for that reason we don't need to repeat it or anything like that and the places I like to use this strumming pattern is at the ends of phrases so earlier when we were looking at verse one we were going from our first strumming pattern down down down down up b a e what I like to do here is I'll just use the second strumming pattern which fills up the whole measure with our G major 7 so on G major 7 I have down down up up down down down up all right so that line is down down up down down down down up switch your pattern again totally optional you can stick with just strumming pattern one if you're more comfortable with that but I do think it kind of fills in the song a little bit more if you end your phrasings with this strumming Rhythm now really quick I am going to add some kind of like optional strums and you'll see it here on the video as like an outline of the arrow so basically what that means is those are some of the beats that I sometimes will play and sometimes I won't um one of the best things about guitar is that when you really get used to these different strumming rhythms you can really interchange them and kind of make them your own so um one of the things I like to do is when the song gets more intense in some portions I will add these beats in as well so with the added beats it would sound like this one and two and a e and a four e and a all right so I just wanted to let you know that I do do that in my cover at the end so if you hear some extra strums that's what those are but like I said I use this strumming pattern at the ends of the phrases so a good example of that would be in the chorus we're going to start with our first strumming pattern that we have split down down down down up down down down down up and then here I'm going to switch to the second strumming pattern down down down down up down down down up all right so if you're able to make the switch from one strumming pattern to the next I do think it really fills out the song makes it sound a lot better um but like I said this can be a little challenging rhythmically so just make sure to pause and take your time to learn this um but those are the two strumming rhythms that I would suggest using for this song Hey really quick in addition to the printable guide we've been looking at did you know I also offer customizable backing tracks polls for What songs you want to learn next and even video chats if you're having trouble you can unlock all these perks and more if you become a patron which helps me grow my channel and make more videos just like this one or if patreon's not your thing you can still help me out a lot by giving me a thumbs up and leaving a comment below to help me reach more people in YouTube's recommendations it only takes a second but makes a huge difference so thanks so much and let's get back into it now that we learned the basic strumming rhythm of how you can play through this song There are a few things I wanted to show you that you can add that are totally optional and extra but I do think it really adds a lot to the song and makes it sound like it's coming together a lot more so the first one I wanted to talk about was your decord so a frill you can add your D chord is you can actually take off your middle finger that makes it D suspended too all right and what I like to do is whenever I'm playing through parts of the verses so the D chords in the verses I'll add this frill on the second down Strom so when we looked at our pattern we had down down down down up I'm going to take off my middle finger for the second down Strom only so we have down down down up okay if you can add that little frill in I think it sounds really good with the verses so in verse one we have a E minor 7 D to a all right super easy to add in there but it really dresses up the song just yesterday morning they let me know you were all right and the second place and I like to do that for all of the verses the second place I like to add a frill is on the a chord so on the a chord specifically in the choruses at the ends of the phrases something I like to do is if you start with your a chord you can add your pinky right here above your ring finger on that b string on third fret and that that's actually your a suspended four then if you take it back off you're back to your regular a then if you take off your ring finger you're on your a suspended two and then you put your ring finger back on back to a okay so we go from Aus 4 to a to Aus 2 back to a so this a chord frill can be a little bit more challenging than the D chord but if you you can add it in I think it sounds really great in the choruses so in the chorus we have our walk down down down up down down down down up and then here on this a chord is where I would add the frill so I have down down up up down down down up and that's really confusing so let me go ahead and try to visually break that down for you what I would suggest doing is staying on your regular a chord for the first four down strums down down and then add your pinky for the next two up strums up up take it off go back to your a chord down take off your ring finger down and then put it back on for the last two beats down up 1 2 3 4 up up down down down up all right it can be a little bit confusing so make sure to pause and take as much time as you need to really look this over and practice all of the coordination with your fingers and again this entire thing is totally optional but I do think it sounds really great with the song So in context with that walk down line we have down down down up down down down down up a okay I've seen fire and I've seen now if this chord frill is a little hard for you a simpler way to do it would just be to kind of copy our D chord so we're going to go from our regular a lift up your ring to your a suspended two and that's the only frill so you would have a and then instead of adding your pinky you would just take off your ring and then back down to a okay so if that's simpler and you like the way that sounds that's another way you can do the a chord frill um again all of this is optional I just do think it sounds really cool and dresses up the song if you can add it in all right so I know that was a lot of information I just threw at you about strumming so make sure to pause the video and take as much time as you need to really internalize these rhythms get the strumming and the counting in order add in those Frills if you want to things like that and then once you have all of that down under your belt we can go ahead and put everything we've learned together to play through the song One 2 ready go just yesterday morning there let me know you are the may put an end to you want to have fun playing through 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 FasTrack and playalong 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