Have You Ever Seen the Rain by Creedence Clearwater Revival Tutorial/Lesson
Have You Ever Seen the Rain
Am, F, C, G, C/B
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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 have you ever seen the rain by CCR on the guitar huge shout out goes to my patrons for voting on this song is this month's Patron picks and also huge thank you goes out to Lava music for sponsoring this video I will be featuring their brand new lava me play guitar in this video today so stay tuned for a little bit more on that later and 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 all right guys so you only need to know five chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our a minor 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 in my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out and then the next chord is our F major we also have our C major there's our G major and then the last chord is our C over B and those are the five chord shapes to play through this song so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and for for between them because it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier and this is actually something that lava music has thought of and built into their guitar one of their smart features includes the practice app where you can actually choose the cord shapes you're currently working on and it will help you practice transitioning between them faster seriously I was impressed with just how many chord shapes they had available to choose from Beyond just your basic open chords and once you select the chords you want to work on you just put them in order of the song that you're trying to learn and then you start playing and the lava me play will will listen to your shapes and let you know whenever you're nailing the transitions it can even generate a report at the end of your practice session to let you know how you're doing over time which is so cool but once you get those core transitions down we can talk a little bit more about the strumming for this song all right so the first thing I always suggest beginners do or people who struggle with singing and playing at the same time is to pull up the song and play through the entire song with a single down strum as you sing through the song and take this time to really just get used to where those chord transitions are going to be happening as you sing through it so here's a quick example of what that would look likeone me there's a the storm and I know it's been coming for some time all right so basically by doing that for the entire song you give yourself a chance to really get used to where those transitions are going to be happening and what word you're singing so 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 I'll make sure to leave that link in the description box for you guys um but once you've done that we can talk about more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so my suggestion for strumming for this song as you can see is just a simple down up down up down up but there's a little bit of nuance to it so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk a little bit more about this Rhythm all right guys so we are going to count this in an eighth note Rhythm so basically it'll sound like this we have 1 and 2 and three and four and 1 and 2 and three and four and down up down down up down up down up down up all right so it may seem simple enough um what you want to do is play this pattern one time through for each chord in the verses um but something that we're going to change a little bit around is for the choruses we're actually going to split this pattern in half so I'm going to add a vertical line right down the middle here and basically what that represents is where we're going to change chords okay so let's go ahead and look at the chorus as an example you can see here on our f and g chord we're going to do the entire strumming pattern so on F we have down up down up down up down up for full measure same with G down up down up down up and then here we're going to do kind of a walk down and this is where you want to split the chords or split the pattern in half so on our C we have our first half down up down up C over B down up down up a minor down up down up to G down up down up all right so it'll make more sense if you put it all the way through in context so let's start with our F chord we have down up down up G walk down each of these is a half measure all right I want to know have you ever seen the rain all right so basically anytime you see this walk down in this song is where you want to split the strumming pattern in half otherwise you want to do the entire strumming pattern per chord for the entire song now one last thing that'll add a lot to this playthrough is I'm going to add an X to some of these down strums and basically what that represents is we're going to kind of mute or Chuck those strums so basically what I'm doing is when I'm strumming down I'm going to use my right hand with my pick in it and as I strum down I'm going to kind of purposefully take the side of my palm and rub it on the strings as I strum down so this is all one motion and you should hear kind of this kind of sound kind of like a just a dead kind of sound and so basically in context with the rest of the strumming pattern it'll sound a lot more rhythmic like the original song so for example let's just put our c chord on you'd have down up Chuck up down up Chuck up and again all I'm doing for that chucking is just kind of muting the strings with my pick hand all right so hopefully you can hear how that sounds a lot like the original and I would just you know incorporate this chucking into the entire song so for example let's go ahead and look at that chorus again if we put in that chucking with all of the walk down chords and everything it'll sound like this we have f g c c over B A minor G I want to know have you ever seen the rain and I want to know have you ever seen the rain coming down on sunny day all right so this chucking motion can take a little bit of getting used to so just make sure to pause the video and take as much time as you need to to get used to that and um just make sure as long as your hands not hurting you should feel a little bit of that roughness as you you know hit the strings but it shouldn't be painful at all okay um but anyways that is the strumming pattern that I would recommend for the entire song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get used to that chucking motion as well as internalizing the strumming pattern the more you can play through without really actively thinking about the Rhythm the easier it'll be to sing on top of it and really quick guys before we jump into that playthrough I wanted to show you guys one of my favorite features on my lava me play guitar which is the live drums app if you've ever seen my beginner series you'll know how important I think it is to practice with a metronome to develop good Rhythm and strumming habits but something else that works just as well but can be a little bit more fun is playing to a drum track and with lavame plays live drums app you can choose from all sorts of music genres and jam with a beat each track is again built into the guitar using the hi lava system and the coolest part is that you can set what tempo you want to play at and the drum track will adjust to match I've seriously had the most fun learning new songs to teach you guys by setting it to a beat and so now let's get into this play along where you can see it in action me ago there's a c the storm and I know it's been coming for some it's over want to 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 FasTrack and play long 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 feel but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye