Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Judy Garland Tutorial/Lesson
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
G, Em7, Am7, D7, B7, E7, A7, D, Cmaj7, G7, Bm, Am, Gmaj7, Em, F#7
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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 Yourself a Merry Little Christmas the Judy Garland version from the movie on the guitar 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 and really quick I should mention that I am going to be teaching this video in the original key as the movie version of the song so in order to do that that does require you to tune your guitar a half step down so if you don't know what that means or how to do that I did make a video right here of the easiest way to tune your guitar half step down um but this is totally optional if you want to play through this song without retuning your guitar you can do it in standard tuning it'll just be a half step higher than the version that I'm going to play through at the end um but you can still use the same chords and picking and strumming and everything it can all be applied it'll just be a half step higher all right guys so for this song we are going to need to know 15 different chord shapes and I know that that sounds like a lot lot um but the good news is a lot of them are just variations of cord shapes you probably already know so it's not as intimidating hopefully so let's go ahead and Jump Right In we're going to start with our G 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 in my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure check that out the next chord shape is our E minor 7 we also have our a minor 7 there's our D7 we have our B7 chord our E7 our A7 then there's our D chord we also have our C major 7 there's our G7 then we have our B minor which is the only bar chord for this song then we have a minor G major 7 and for this chord um the traditional fingering is something like this however if that's hard for you to play like it is for me I actually prefer to play my G major 7 with my ring finger just scooch down a fret so if that's more comfortable you can play it like I do then we have our E minor and then the last last chord shape you need to know is our F Shar 7 and those are the 15 chords to play through this song but just really quick I know that you probably heard me say a lot of those seven chords if you are a beginner and you're not familiar with a lot of these chords you can always replace any of those seventh chords with the regular version of that chord so for example instead of G7 you can just play a g and instead of D7 you can play a regular D so on and so forth so if that's easier for you go ahead and replace those chords with the regular fingerings so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really memorize all of those chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them cuz that'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier and of course if transitioning your chords fast enough is something that you're currently struggling with I would suggest checking out my practice with me Series where we go through the skill in real time together but once you have all of those chords Down we can go ahead ahead and talk about the strumming that I would recommend for this song all right so if you're new to guitar or you struggle with singing and playing at the same time the first thing I would suggest you do is to bring up the song and go through the whole thing with a single down strum for each chord change as you sing through the song and take this time to really get used to where those chord changes are going to happen so here's a quick example of what that would look like with the first verse Yourself a Merry Little Christmas let your heart be light all right so you would basically want to do that for the entire song and just make sure you know what word you're singing and things like that whenever those chords are changing and this actually something you do right now if you check out my patreon page I do have this entire guide available to download and print out for free so I will make sure to leave that link in the description box for you as well as in this ey card right up here but once you've done that practice pattern and you're familiar with where those chords are changing we can go ahead and talk about a more full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so my suggestion for strumming as you can see is just down down up down down up so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk a little bit more about this Rhythm all right guys so we're going to be in a super simple eighth note strumming rhythm today so basically it's going to count like this we have one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down down up down down up all right super basic and straightforward um really quick before we move on I'm going to put a vertical line right down the middle here and basically what that's going to represent is where we're going to change chords because this song Moves a little bit more slowly we are going to play two different chords within one measure so that's what that vertical line means and with that being said we're going to play this full pattern through one time for each chord pairing so basically let's go ahead and break down the first verse we have G to E minor 7 so on your G chord you would play the first half of this strumming pattern down down down up then you go to your E minor 7 and finish it out down down up all right same thing with the next two chords we have a minor 7 down down up to D7 down down up all right super simple you can actually use the strumming pattern for the entire song and it sounds really great so let's go ahead and go through an example of what this would sound like with the verse yourself A Merry Little Christmas let your heart be all right so super simple and you can apply that for the entire song now if you did go to my patreon page and print out that guide you'll notice that some of the chords have a little asterisk next to them and basically what that means is those are chords we're going to hold out for the whole measure so instead of splitting the strumming pattern in half for the starred chords we're going to play through the whole pattern okay so for example the end of the verse would be an example of that next year all the Tres will be mile away all right so you can see there the E minor and the G7 both have asteris next to them and so basically you're going to hold that whole pattern out one time through the entire measure for all of the chords with those stars but yeah that's a super simple strumming pattern that you can actually apply for the entire song so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really internalize and memorize this strumming Rhythm so you can play it through the whole song however if you are somebody who maybe wants to dabble in some finger picking and you feel like you're a little bit more advanced I do think that this song is Beautiful with a beautiful finger picking pattern and I have one for you that's fairly easy that I wanted to show you how to play so let's go ahead and talk about the finger picking that you can use for this song all right guys so let's go ahead and break down this finger picking pattern even though we have so many chords the actual pattern itself is fairly easy to understand once you get the formula down so basically with our right hand I want you to take your thumb and your thumb is going to be assigned to the top three strings E A and D and it's going to stay there the entire time when we're playing through this and with your pointer middle and ring finger I want you to put those on the bottom three Str strings the g b and high E string and so for this entire picking pattern these three fingers are going to live on these three bottom strings and the only finger that should be moving is your thumb because it's going to cover the base or the root note of every chord shape okay so now let's go ahead and talk about our left hand basically you just want to hold each chord shape down so for example let's start with our G chord you're going to hold that down like regular and with your right hand instead of strumming we're going to pick each of these strings by themselves so we're going to start with our thumb on the sixth low E string then our pointer finger goes to the G string and then you're going to see that the two and the one are in a parentheses together and basically anytime I annotate these numbers in parentheses that just means you're going to pick them at the same time like together and then come back with your pointer finger on the G string and that's the whole pattern all right and so if you can get used to using your right hand with each of these individual strings like that then it'll be a lot easier to play through the rest of the chords because the rest of the chords follow this exact same pattern so let's go ahead and cover the other ones for our E minor 7 it's going to look just like G 6 3 2 1 3 for a minor 7 your thumb's going to move to this fifth a string cuz that's our root note okay D7 for our B7 chord B7 A7 d E minor G7 C major 7 B minor a minor G major 7 and F Shar 7 all right so that's how you're going to pick all of the chords in this song with your right hand once you can get used to kind of how that pattern goes all you have to do now is put them in order through the song So similarly to the strumming pattern you're just going to play this picking pattern one time through per chord throughout the song except for those starred chords again those are going to be held out a little bit longer so on those chords only you're going to play the picking pattern twice in a row so let's go ahead and look at that first verse as an example we have G E minor 7 a minor 7 D7 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas let your heart be all right I think this sounds super beautiful and really reminiscent of Judy Garland's version in the movie so if you can do the picking I would highly suggest trying it out so just as a quick example the end of that verse we have a few starred chords so that's what this would sound like next troubles will be miles away all right so just remember those starred chords you're going to repeat this picking pattern twice for those chords only otherwise you're just going to play the P picking pattern one time through per chord for the entire song all right guys so again pause the video and take as much time as you need to get used to this picking pattern practice the right hand motion for all of the different chords and then try to put it in context with the song if you can do the picking pattern or maybe that's something that you you prefer I would suggest playing it through this way if you're going to sing it for people I do think it kind of brings more of a sentimental value to the song so um anyways once you have the picking pattern down we can go ahead and use everything we've learned in this tutorial to play through the song 1 2 ready go Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas let your heart be light next year all our troubles will be out of side want to play through the rest of the song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page where you can unlock access to this FasTrack playong tutorial where we go through the whole song in real time together it's all for free so I will make sure to leave that 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 and feel but it's just as fun to play so I will see you over there and happy holidays bye