Good Riddance by Greenday Tutorial/Lesson
Good Riddance
G, C, Em, D, Cadd9, Dsus4, Em7
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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 good riddance time of your life by Green Day on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn so this song is really super beginner-friendly because there's only four chords you need to know for the whole song none of them are bar chords they're all open and pretty easy fingerings and on top of that you don't need any capo to play this in the original key and there's only one strumming pattern and one picking pattern that you can know for this song and if you are unfamiliar with picking you can do this drumming pattern for the whole thing and it'll be just the same so let's go ahead and jump into what those chords look like all right so let's take a closer look at these chords you need to know I'm gonna start with G which looks like this and sounds like this after that you need to know see which looks like this and sounds like this the next chord you need to note is d which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is a minor which looks like this and sounds like this now one important thing to note with these chords is that throughout my cover at the end you'll see me switching from this regular C to a C ad 9 chord so I'm going to go ahead and teach you the C ad 9 chord as well which looks like this and sounds like this and again see a 9 and C will be interchangeable in this song but the reason why I'm showing you see at 9 is because if you want to attempt that picking pattern at the end of the video see at 9 is going to be the version of C that you'll need to play so again this is just an optional chord if you want to just strum the whole way through you can feel free to stick with your regular C pattern sorry hey everyone its editing me from the future I just realized that I went through this whole tutorial and I never taught you guys a chord that you do need to know for this song and it is D suspended for so I'm going to go ahead and show you guys how to play that right now so D suspended for it looks like this and sounds like this okay back to past me who shot this weeks ago bye alright so once you have those chords memorized and you can transition between them let's go ahead and jump into our first strumming pattern so if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials you'll know that the first strumming pattern I always suggest beginners start with it's just one down strum on the beat for every chord change and this is just so you can get to know where those chord changes are gonna be in the song and it'll give you a chance to practice singing through the song as well so that you can get more familiar with it because that'll help you a lot when the patterns get a little more difficult things like that so let's go ahead and put our G chord on since that's what this song starts with and what you're just gonna do is strum down once on your G chord then we go to our next chord which is C and strum down once and then D strum down once so essentially you want to take that through the rest of the song and just strum down for every chord change that you see so let me go ahead and take you through the first verse and just show you what that would sound like with our one down strum strumming pattern another turning point a fork stuck in the road time grabs you by the wrist and directs you where to go so I'll make the best of this test and don't ask why not a question but a lesson learned in time so as you can see all I was doing there was taking through the first verse and every time I saw a chord change I just strummed it down once just so that I knew where like which word I would be on whenever I had to do those transitions but once you have that down and you've taken that through the whole song let's go ahead and move on to our first real strumming pattern so here it is as you can see it's just down down up down up and this pattern can apply for every chord through the entire song so it's really the only strumming pattern you need to know in order to play the whole song I'm gonna have my G chord on because that's what it starts with and the whole pattern is just down down so go ahead and put your G chord on and try that with me we've got down down and if you're new to guitar what I'm doing between those two up strums is I'm just circling my hand back around so that I can be down here by the sound hole to do that next up strum so one more time let's do that we've got down down and that's the whole strumming pattern so once you have that rhythm down let's go ahead and put in some of those chord transitions so with our G chord on we've got down down up down down down see gee up down up T all right so now once you have the pattern down and those transitions in all you have to do is speed it up to get it a little bit more at tempo and then you can play through the whole song so let's put our G chord back on and let's go ahead and speed it up a little bit to get it at tempo so we've got down down up up down down down up up down go ahead and play with me of the down down up up down up down down up up down all right once you have it at that tempo go ahead and add those transitions back in and then we can play through the song so we've got G twice question and congratulations once you have that strumming pattern under your belt you can use it to apply for the entire song and it'll sound great so if that's where you're comfortable with with strumming go ahead and stop there and go to the end of the video where I'll be playing through the whole song and so you can play along with me but if you are being a little bit more adventures and you want to learn a picking pattern that you can learn with this song they go ahead and stay tuned and I will show you a picking pattern that you can use all right so I've lived in a little bit to teach you this picking pattern we're gonna go ahead and start with our G chord on and I know some of you guys know G without the pinkie so it looks like this but for this picking pattern you will want to be playing it this way with both your pinkie and your ring finger on the top two strings so with our G chord on what we're going to do is we're going to use our thumb to pick the bottom east string then you're going to use your pointer finger and put that on the third g string and then your middle finger is going to go on the second B string okay now what we're gonna do is we're gonna go back and forth between these strings a little bit so go ahead and pick your sixth string followed by your pointer and then your ring finger so we got thumb pointer middle finger so here you're going to use your pointer finger to play that g-string again and then you're going to move your thumb up to the fourth of D string and click that so let's do that again we've got six three two three four and then you're gonna take your pointer finger and then pick that g string one more time that's the whole pattern through let's go ahead and do that again we've got six three two three four so that's the whole pattern for G I'm going to go ahead and teach you the rest of the patterns before we speed it up so now let's go to our C AB 9 chord this is going to be pretty much the same as our G chord except now our thumb is going to be on the fifth string since that's our bass note so we're gonna do some so 5 and then your pointer and your middle finger are gonna still be on the same strings so we've got 5 3 2 3 4 3 so you'll notice in this whole pattern your pointer and your middle finger are always going to be doing the same pattern it's your thumb that's going to be changing its base note through this so let's do that see adenine chord again we've got five three two three four three so now let's go back and forth between G and C at 9 so go ahead and put your G chord on we've got 6 3 2 3 4 3 then switch to G AB not C at 9 sorry same thing 5 3 2 3 4 3 let me show you the next chord which is our D chord here our thumbs gonna be moving to the 4th D string but our pointer and our middle finger are still gonna be on the 3rd and 2nd strings respectively and it's going to be the same pattern so we've got some pointer middle pointer the pointer or 4 3 2 3 4 3 so you'll notice on your left playing hand when we're playing this through our pinky and our ring finger never moved from these strings so you've got G C at 9 and then D this is actually D suspended 4 but it works for this tutorial for this picking pattern so I just like to keep my pinky and ring finger down the whole time and then again with this hand you'll notice your pointer and your middle finger are going to be doing the exact same pattern on the exact same strings but what we're going to do is change up our thumb so now let's play through all of these together we've got G 6 3 2 3 4 3 then we've got C at 9 5 3 2 3 4 3 then we've got D 4 3 2 3 4 3 alright and then the last chord that you need to know is our E minor chord so for e minor it's going to be exactly the same as our G chord we're gonna go 6 with our thumb 3 with our pointer with our middle three for three so you've got six three two for three so now once you have that down let's go ahead and put it in rhythm so let me play it through for you we've got so go ahead and put your G chord on and try that with me 6 3 2 3 4 3 you okay and so now we'll do that same rhythm for our C ad 9 chord we've got 5 3 2 3 4 3 go ahead do that with me 5 3 2 3 4 3 and it's the same with our D chord same rhythm we got 4 3 2 3 4 3 one more time 4 3 2 3 4 3 so now let's go ahead and play the intro of this song so you can see what that sounds like together we've got our G chord on we've got twice see Dean so go ahead and try playing that with me with our G chord 6 3 2 3 4 3 twice see ah nein me and that's the whole intro to these song so once you have that down you can just speed it up until you can get it at tempo let me I'll go ahead and play that for you so you can hear it again and then once you can play that you can apply that for the whole song so it's the same at the strumming like I said with strumming pattern if you want to use it for the whole song you can and it's the same with the picking if you want to use this picking pattern through for the whole song you also can the only place that it'll change is when you do the chorus which involves that a minor so let me go ahead and show you how we would use that picking pattern there again it's the same pattern so we've got six three two three four three all right so let's go through the chorus one time so you can at least hear what that sounds like we've got a minor g e-minor a minor d gee all right so let's go ahead and put that together and we'll play through the first first I'll go a little bit slower than tempo so we can try to keep up with our picking patterns but we've got G twice yeah nine Dean the turning point for stuck in the time grabs you by let it go here's our E minor so make the best of this test and don't ask why a question but in time let's go over that a minor section again we've got a minor 6 3 2 3 4 3 into D 4 3 2 3 4 3 into C 5 3 2 3 4 3 into G 6 3 2 3 4 3 so let's do that one more time with our E minor d see gee all right so I've taken you through every section that you'll need to know for picking for this song let's go ahead and put it all together and I'm gonna play through the first verse for you just so you can hear what it sounds like together we're starting with our G chord on we've got see at 9:00 d gee another turning before stuck in the time grabs you by the direction where to go so make the best of this test and don't ask why a question but a lesson learned in time we'll go ahead and go into the chorus it's something unpredictable it's right hope you have a time back into they're in trouble all right so I've taken you through every part of the song that you would need to know to do the picking pattern so go ahead and if you want to attempt this picking pattern go ahead and pause this video and practice that through until you're ready and when you're ready to play it at tempo then let's go ahead and continue the video and put everything we learned together to play through the whole song alright so once you have the chords memorized you can transition between them pretty easily and you've gotten that strumming pattern down and that picking pattern if that's something that you want to learn let's go ahead and put all of those elements together and we can play through the whole song of good riddance time of your life by Green Day I will be listing up here in this corner what strumming or peaking pattern I'm using for my cover but of course you can feel free to use whatever you want to and I'll also list all of the lyrics and the chord changes and everything karaoke style on screen in front of you so when you're ready let's go ahead and continue and play through the whole song good luck the turning point a fork stuck in the by the wrist and evacuated so me this test don't have fun a question but in time and it's right I hope you have a time sorry were swimmer your life okay so that was my tutorial for good riddance time of your life by a green day I really hope that you guys liked it if you found it helpful please make sure to give it a thumbs up down below as well as subscribe to my channel that way you guys know every single time I upload video and if you aren't already subscribed don't forget to turn on that Bell notification that way you'll know every time I post anything and yeah here are my social media sites in case you guys are interested in checking me out on any of those I'll do sneak peeks and giveaways and things like that on there as well as find people to give shout outs to so if you want to get a shout out like this person right here make sure to follow me on my social media sites as well I guess that completes this tutorial so until next time thanks again for watching and I will see you in my next video bye