FRIENDS Theme Song (I'll Be There For You) by The Rembrandts Tutorial/Lesson
FRIENDS Theme Song (I'll Be There For You)
A, G, C#m, Bm, D, E
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 the friends theme song on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something you want to learn make sure to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on another new tutorial and follow me on instagram for your chance to win a free lesson with me so this song is going to be pretty beginner friendly make sure if you want to play in the original key to have your guitar in standard tuning and you do not need a capo for this song we have a six chords to play this through two of them are bar chords though so if that's something that you're struggling with right now make sure to check out my tmt on how to practice and get better at those including exercises and tips and tricks on how to get better at your bar chords but beyond that we also only have one strumming pattern to play through the whole song so it's super simple and if you want to play that kind of solo line at the beginning and at the end of the theme song i'm going to teach you guys the picking pattern for that as well so let's go ahead and jump into this tutorial and we'll start with the chords all right so let's go ahead and start with the chords like i said there's only six to play this whole song and we're going to start with our a chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that you need to know your g chord which looks like this and sounds like this next we have our c sharp minor chord which is our bar one of our bar chords that looks like this and sounds like this next we have our b minor chord which is another barre chord that looks like this and sounds like this then we have our d which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is e which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the six chords you need to know for the song all right so once you have those chords memorized make sure you take a few moments to practice transitioning between them because this song does move kind of quickly if transitioning is something that you're struggling with right now i do have a tmt on how to get better at those and do like practice and things like that so make sure to check that out if that's something that you're struggling with but let's go ahead and move on to the strumming pattern i like to use for this song all right so the strumming pattern i like to use for this song can be applied through the whole song and as you can see it's down down up down up and we're gonna repeat this a few times for each chord um depending on what part of the song you're in and things like that but i will get into that a little bit later so first let's go ahead and go through the motions of this strumming pattern i have my a chord on since that's the first chord in the song we just have down down up all right and that's the whole pattern so let's do that again down down up down nice so now let's do it a few times in a row to get used to that rhythm one two three four down up down up down down up down awesome so super simple right now all you want to do is put in those core transitions so let's go ahead and put the core transitions up on screen so you can see them and now what we're gonna do is hold out this pattern a few times for each of these chords okay so starting with our a chord we've got down down up down up twice three times then you switch your g chord down down up down up back to a down down up down up twice three times then you go to your c sharp minor down down up down up all right so that's just the beginning now what you want to do is practice that strumming pattern through the entire little theme song so that you know how many times you're going to be playing through it for each chord and things like that for that you can go to the playthrough here at the end and kind of play through it with me however i am gonna move on so what we want to do now after you have the chords and the transitions down is you want to speed it up because this song does go pretty fast so let me go ahead and show you one time what it sounds like at tempo one two three four down down up down all right so as you can see it is moving a little bit faster than we were just practicing it at but don't worry if this is a little bit fast for you just pause the video and practice this at your own tempo but once you get it up to speed you can actually apply this strumming pattern through the entire song and it'll be the same for the entire theme song so it's really great super simple just to have this one strumming pattern however there is one more thing i wanted to show you as far as strumming goes um in the theme song there is a part where it kind of builds up into the more chorusy part of the theme song when it hasn't been your day your week your month or even your year on the word year another strumming pattern that you can use is just going down and up straight down and up on your strumming hand for eight beats one two three four five six seven eight all right so let me show you where i would put that and sing it a little bit so you can have it in context with our g chord on i'm gonna do that last line and again we're doing the first strumming pattern for most of this and then switching to that down up strumming pattern just on the word year so right here in the word year we're going to strum down and up eight times all right so again you can add that in there into your cover if you want to i do think that it sounds really good if you put that in there however you could totally just keep with this first strumming pattern if you wanted to um but yeah that is the entire song so you could use that strumming pattern with these chords and play through the entire theme song however like i promised i will show you how to do that kind of um solo line that you hear at the beginning and at the end of the theme song so let me go ahead and zoom in so i can show you the picking pattern for that all right so i've zoomed in a little bit to show you guys how to play this little solo uh picking line thing at the beginning so with your left hand the first thing i want you to do is put your a chord on and what you're going to do is strum it down once then you're going to take your pick and go back to that second b string and pick it two more times all right so we've got a two then we're going to pick it one more time but before you do that you want to take your ring finger on your cord playing hand and take that off okay so it's no longer an a like that we're taking our ring finger off and then picking that second string one more time all right so we've got a two two and then you take it off all right and then after that you just go next door and pick the third string all right so let's do that again a two take off your ring finger and then third string nice awesome all right so from here we're gonna stay on our third string but this time take off your middle finger okay so now only your first finger is on and pick that twice on your third string then go ahead and put your middle finger back on and pick it once okay so we have open open and then second finger on and this is all on the third string okay good and then once you have that you're just going to go next door to the second open string because your third finger on your your ring finger on your a chord is still off so it's just our open second string okay and then go back and then pick the third string one more time so let's do that last half again starting on our third string we've got open open second finger open b string back to our second finger all right good nice so if you put that with the beginning part we've got a strum then we've got two two let go of your ring finger open switch over to your third string to let go of your second finger open open put your second finger back on two and then go next door to your open b string and then back to your two on your third string that's the whole intro there all right let's do that one more time nice and that's how you play that little solo one at the beginning cool so when i do my cover i just like to kind of add that at the beginning and then you just want to repeat it and do it one more time nice good so basically yeah you want to repeat this little picking pattern twice in a row to go through the very beginning of the theme song so let me go ahead and show that to you guys without stopping nice so um this is gonna take a little bit of practice especially if you're using a pick like me um i find pics a little bit harder to use than like you know my fingers and stuff but um yeah that is how you're going to play through this so go ahead and pause the video and give that a practice but you also hear kind of a solo line at the very end of the song so i wanted to go ahead and show that to you as well so the song ends on a g chord so go ahead and put your g chord on i'll be there for you because you're there for me too we're going to end on our g chord so right here we're going to add in another little solo picking line and how we're going to do that is we're going to go to our second string and it should be open right like there's no fingers on the second string so you're going to pick that twice then what i want you to do is take your first finger off your g string and put that on the second fret of your third g string and then give that a pick okay so we've got good and then after that you just want to take your first finger off and then pick that open g string okay so let's do that again good and then from here you just want to take your third finger your ring finger and put that on the third fret of the second b string and we're just going to go down the scale we've got our ring finger on the third fret middle finger on the second fret then we're going to take off all fingers and play open so you can hear kind of it's going down a scale perfect so let's go ahead and put everything together we've got open open first finger on the second fret of a g string then take it off and pick it open then we've got our little scale three two open and then the chord or the song ends on an a chord and that's how the song ends so let's go ahead and do that last part one more time all right let's slow down do it one more time so we've got our g chord nice awesome so again these are kind of optional if you wanted to add that into your cover when you're playing your chords i do think that it sounds really cool and really a lot like the theme song itself so feel free to add these in there if you want to again you're gonna have to practice them slowly before you can speed it up but if you can get it i think it'll sound really good to put it with the song no one told you life was gonna be this way i'll be there all right so that was my tutorial for how to play that friends theme song i really hope you liked it if you did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on another new tutorial 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 things that you want to see and this is also where i do my free monthly lesson giveaway so make sure to follow me on instagram for your chance to win and one last little plug if you liked the shirt i was wearing in today's tutorial this is my forever faithful guitar shirt and you can find this and a lot of other different designs in my merch store link down below as well as under this video every purchase there really helps my channel to grow and allows me to continue making these free tutorials for you guys so thank you so much to anyone who's ever supported me in that way but i think that ends this tutorial so thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you in my next one bye you