Free Fallin' by Tom Petty Tutorial/Lesson
Free Fallin'
E, Asus2, Bsus4
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Video transcript
foreign my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Free Fallin by Tom Petty 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 second to thank today's sponsor Burrows 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 Burrows 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 bros 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 I'm going to go ahead and classify this song as beginner friendly the hardest thing that you're gonna have to encounter is probably the strumming Rhythm but before we get into any of that let's go ahead and talk about our guitar you will need to be in standard tuning and go ahead and put your Capo on the first fret to have it in the same key as the original song I only have three chord shapes to show you today and you can use those three chords to play through the entire song so it makes it super beginner friendly as well as three different variations of strumming that go from like easier to harder so you can kind of choose what level you're at but with all of that being said let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial and we'll start with the chords alright guys so I've zoomed in a little to take a closer look at these chords like I said there are only three shapes you need to know to play through the entire song and we're going to start with our E major which looks like this and sounds like this foreign and by the way if you don't know how to read these chord charts that you're seeing on screen I Do cover how to do that in my beginner series episode three so I will make sure to link that right here for those of you who need it the next chord is our a suspended two and then the last chord is our B suspended four before we move on I wanted to show you guys two quick little tips between our E major chord and our a suspended two chord an easy way to transition there is just to take your middle and ring finger and move them each down one string and that makes that transition really easy the second tip that I have is that in the a suspended 2 and your B suspended four chord you do not want to pick the bottom low E string when you're strumming so something you can do with your a suspended two chord is take your thumb wrap that around your neck of your guitar here just gently lightly press that low E string and that will mute it so when you strum the whole cord you don't hear that low E string you know if you do hear the E string it's part of the chord anyway so it's really not that big a deal if you play it and then same with that be suspended four chord um since you're fingering it this way you can take your middle finger and lightly just press it there that'll mute that string as well so when you strum the whole thing you're only hearing the strings that you need but again if you strum this low E on accident it's part of the chord anyway so it really doesn't sound that bad but just some quick tips to share with you guys on transitioning and meeting those strings so go ahead and take a few minutes to pause the video memorize those chord shapes practice those little tips if you would like to and just get used to transitioning between your chords back and forth that'll really make the rest of this song so much easier if you can do those transitions quickly but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into these strumming patterns that I want to show you so the first trimming pattern is super simple as you can see it's just one single down strum and all you want to do is basically use this down strum to sink through the song and really take mental notes of what word you're singing whatever those chords are changing it doesn't really change throughout the song so if you can do the single down strum pattern the other two patterns will be a little bit easier for you as well so a quick example of how that would sound would be like if we have verse one here on screen you just want to do each of these chords with one single down strum so we have e to a suspended to to Asus 2 e and then B suspended four so this rhythm is really important for you to get down now with your single down strum it goes all right so you can see the second a suspended two into your E chord that's going to go a little bit faster one and two and three and four and one and two and all right so just make sure that you you know get that Rhythm down if you're familiar with the song at all this should be pretty easy for you but just make sure that you have that kind of feel going because that'll stay true throughout the rest of these strumming patterns as well so with some singing in there it would sound like this she said mama loves Jesus all right so basically you want to repeat that for the entire song just really get used to what word you're singing whenever those chords are changing get used to that Rhythm and things like that um this is actually a strumming pattern that you can use to play through the entire song If you are at the beginner level and that's all you can handle it actually sounds pretty good but where I actually like to use it is the intro and the first verse you can hear in the song that it's very plain and simple when it starts out so that's where I like to use this strumming pattern but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the second strumming pattern alright guys so the second strumming pattern I have to show you today is just eight down strums and it's gonna sound a little something like this foreign pattern is going to be kind of the more medium level strumming pattern it's not too much harder than the first one but basically the thing that makes this harder is that we are going to have to change cords in the middle of this strumming pattern so let me go ahead and just put a few vertical lines here and basically what this is going to represent is where we have to change chords during an entire kind of round of these chords so when you're on your E chord you're going to go down down then at that second vertical line you're going to switch over to your a suspended two and finish it out down down down and then here when we go from Asus 2 to e to be suspended four really fast that's where this other um vertical line is going to come into play so now you do your first down strum on a suspended then you do the next two on your e and then you do your last five on your B suspended four it may not make much sense when we're not going in Rhythm so let me go ahead and put all of this together to show you how this would sound together so we have e a e a e down down down down down down down down all right so again you could use this strumming pattern for the entire song as well um it's not that much harder than the first one and it does sound pretty good with the song as well but where I actually like to use it in my cover is on the fourth verse kind of when he's talking about you know writing her name in the sky and things like that it gets a little bit more rhythmic and drummy there and so that's where I like to use this strumming pattern as well as in the instrumental break right at the end right before the last chorus but I'll make sure to go through all of this at my place at the end so with that being said let's go ahead and talk about our last third strumming pattern alright guys so our third strumming pattern is going to be quite a long one so here it is as you can see it's down down up up down down down up and then down down up down down down up so the whole thing is going to sound like this foreign now I know all of that might seem a little overwhelming but don't worry we are going to break this down as you might have guessed this is kind of like the hardest way to play the song but I do think it sounds the most accurate to the way that he plays it as well so basically let's just go ahead and focus on one half of this strumming pattern first so we have down down up up down down up I'm going to go ahead and put a vertical line here in the beginning half that again is going to represent where we're changing strings so just for this first half we're just focusing on the E to the a suspended two chord what you want to do is do the E chord on the first two down strums down then switch to your a suspended two and finish out the rest of this pattern all right so without stopping it sounds like this foreign and so that's that Rhythm let's go ahead and look at the second half of the Rhythm here so here again I'm going to put two vertical lines so it's going to go down line down line and then the rest of it down up down down down up this again is going to represent where we're changing chords so now let's look at the second half of our little round of chords we have a suspended two to e to be suspended four what you want to do is play your a suspended two one time on that first down strum then you're going to play your E chord one time on that second down strum and then you're gonna finish out the rest of this pattern with your B suspended four chord so again without stopping it would be like this so down so again I know that this is super you know kind of intense so if you're a beginner feel free to stick with strumming pattern one or two but um with swimming pattern three this is kind of the way that it sounds the most like the original song and so if you can get this memorized and broken up you know correctly in your head and like figure that out it actually does come pretty naturally if you are familiar with the song so let's go ahead and put both halves of this strumming pattern together to see what the whole round of chords would sound like we're going to start on our e down down up up down down up to the next half down down up down down up all right again without me talking foreign so hopefully you can kind of hear the song coming together too all right this is going to take a lot of practice I think to you know get used to that Rhythm and kind of feel it and internalize it before you can put in some singing but this is something that can work for the entire song as well so for the chorus that would sound like this now I'm free again just make sure to pause the video and just take some time to memorize you know the up and down motions and really take some time to get used to how that sounds something I will say is that whenever you're playing guitar and you plan on doing a cover where you're going to sing with your guitar playing the best advice I have for that is to get used to a rhythm that you naturally are feeling so if this strumming pattern that I have written here is confusing or doesn't make sense to you feel free to make it your own add in your down and up strums wherever you see fit this is just kind of like the basic way that I can hear the strumming pattern in the song so take that for what it's worth but when I actually play through it sometimes I'll actually find myself adding an extra down or up strums without really even realizing and that's okay like you want to kind of develop your own ear for this kind of stuff and figure out how to do strumming on your own but here is the basic outline that I have to provide for you and if you want to stick with this you could play that for the entire song as well it sounds really great but with all of that being said let's go ahead and put all this together to place in the song ready go she's a good girl who's crazy and our boyfriend too 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 Fast Track and play along guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below as well as in this icard right up here all right guys but I think that concludes this video so I really hope that it helps if it did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on any other new guitar tutorials another huge thank you goes out to Burrows guitars for sponsoring this video as well as a special shout out to all of my top patrons over on my patreon page I will make sure to list all of their names on screen right now and of course a big thank you to all of my patrons for supporting my channel and making videos just like this impossible you guys are awesome 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 of 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 concludes the video today so thank you so much for watching I really hope that it helped and I will see you in my next one coming out really bye