Heather by Conan Gray Tutorial/Lesson
Heather
C, Em, Am, Fmaj7, Fm
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Video transcript
so hey everyone my name is ellen and today i'm going to be showing you guys how to play heather by conan gray 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 also follow me on instagram for your chance to win a free lesson with me all right guys so let's go ahead and jump straight into it if you want to play this song in the original key then make sure your guitar is in standard tuning and go ahead and put your capo on the fifth fret besides that this song is actually going to be pretty good if you're a beginner because there's only five chords in the whole song and only one barre chord and they repeat themselves in the same order for the whole song so it's really great if you're having trouble with transitions and there's only one real strumming pattern that i want to show you so let's go ahead and jump into what i'll be showing you in this tutorial alright so like i said you only need to know five chords to play through this entire song and those are c e minor a minor f major seven and f minor now that f minor chord is gonna be a bar chord so if that's something you're struggling with right now make sure to check out my tmt on how to get better at practicing those i put tips and tricks and practice techniques and things like that in there for you but anyways if you want me to break down these chords a little bit closer and show you guys how to play them make sure to skip to this time right here where i will break down these chords and give you the chord charts and things like that however if you feel like you're already familiar with these chords and you don't need to know that then let's go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern i want to show you for this song so i do actually want to show you guys two strumming patterns for this song but the first one is a practice pattern and as you can see it's just one down strum on the beat for every chord change and i always suggest that if you're a beginner you start right here especially if you're having trouble with singing and playing at the same time this is a great place to start so if you want me to kind of break that down for you and explain how to use that make sure to skip to this time right here however if you feel like you don't need to do the one down strum pattern then we can go ahead and jump into the actual strumming pattern that i do like to use for this song so the strumming pattern for this song is super simple as you can see it's just down up down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this now you're going to play this strumming pattern through four times or two times for each chord in the song depending on what chord you're playing but i will explain how to do that and break all of that down in my strumming pattern section so make sure to skip to this time if you're interested in more of an in-depth slower look at how to play this pattern however if you feel like you already got it and the rhythm and everything just by watching this overview you can always skip to the play through here at the end where i will go through the whole song and have all the chords and lyrics and everything you need to know on screen in front of you so we can play through the song together but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the more in-depth part of this tutorial and we'll start with the chord alright guys so again i've zoomed in to get a closer look at these chords the first one you need to know is c which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got e minor which looks like this and sounds like this next we have a minor which looks like this and sounds like this then we have f major 7 which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is your barre chord which is f minor and that looks like this and sounds like this and those are the only chords you need to know for the song all right so once you have these chords memorized go ahead and pause the video and make sure that you can transition between them like i said at the beginning of the video the chord progression for this entire song is exactly the same it's always going to go from c to e minor to a minor to f major seven to f minor so as long as you can transition between these chords in that order you should be able to play through the whole song i do have a tmt on how to practice transitioning chords faster so if that's something you're struggling make sure to check that out for tips and tricks on how to practice your transitions but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming patterns that i like to use for this song all right so like i said in the overview the first strumming pattern is actually kind of a practice pattern it's just one down strum on the beat for every chord change again this is where i suggest you start if you're a beginner or if you're having trouble singing and playing guitar at the same time but um this is really super simple all you want to do is put your chord on which our c chord is our first chord in the song and you're just going to strum down once then you move to your next chord which is e minor strum down once then a minor strum down once major seven f minor and that's the whole strumming pattern again this is not really used in the actual song but i do think it's really helpful to learn the song so let me go ahead and put some lyrics on screen here and i'm going to show you how i would use this if you're trying to learn how to sing and play at the same time you basically want to make sure that when you're switching your chords you know exactly what syllable or what word you'll be singing that way you can kind of keep your singing in line with your guitar playing so let me go ahead and take you through an example by going through the chorus why would you ever kiss me i'm not even half as pretty you gave her your sweater it's just polyester but you like her better i wish i were heather all right so you can see there all i did was highlight which syllable or which word i was singing when i was doing those chord transitions and that's just a really good way to kind of ease into singing and playing at the same time so i would suggest that if you're new to guitar to go ahead and do this for the entire song but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern that i do actually like to use for this song all right so the strumming pattern i like to use for this song is super simple as you can see it's just down up down up and we're going to play this through four times for each chord except towards the end of the phrase where we'll play it two times for each chord so that's kind of confusing let me go ahead and just break that down so go ahead and put your c chord on since that's the first chord in the song and let's go ahead and go through the motions we've got down up down up super simple you don't have to do any circles or anything like that it's just straight up and down all right so when you put it in rhythm it does go a little bit faster we've got down up down up so you can see that last little triplet up down up is all smushed together so we've got down up down up all right and once you can kind of string this together and you do it four times it'll sound like this i'll count us in we've got one and two and three and four and down up down up down up down up down all right so hopefully you can hear the rhythm and you can see how we're kind of just taking this strumming pattern and repeating it over and over again so we're playing this four times for the c chord so let's do that again three and four and down up down twice three times four times awesome and so once you get that down we just want to move on to the next chord which is our e minor chord we're going to do the exact same thing we've got once twice three times four times then you go to your a minor chord this is also four times once twice three times four times all right and then when we get to the last two f chords here the f major seven and the f minor you're only going to do it twice okay so for f major seven we've got down up down up twice up down up then go ahead and switch to your f minor and do it twice down up down up twice up down up all right so i'll put that on screen so you can see here for c e minor and a minor we're gonna play through this pattern four times for each of those chords then for the f major seven and the f minor we're gonna only play it through twice so when you string all of that together you should be able to hear the song the way it's played in the original i'm gonna go ahead and string it all together and play for you now if you want to join me then please feel free to i'm going to go ahead and count us in one and two and three and four and c up down up down up three times four times b minor twice three times four times a minor twice three times four times f major seven twice f minor twice you got it all right awesome so like i said this strumming pattern is applicable for the entire song and again this chord progression never changes it's gonna stay in this exact order for the whole song so if you could keep up with me through one round of that you could play through the entire song right now so um with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the play through where i will have all the chords and lyrics and everything you need to know on screen in front of you so we can play through the song together this is heather by conan gray good luck i still remember if you knew eyes why would you ever kiss is how could i hate her she's such an angel and again kind of wish she would dead as she walks by is you gave her your sweaters this why would you ever her your sweater it's just better all right so that was my tutorial for how to play heather by conan gray if it helped you 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 you want to see and this is also where i go to find someone to feature in my new segment forever features this week we have roxanna from iran performing real friends by camila cabello let's give it a listen and tonight fights no i am no stranger to surprise this paper time has let me down too many times if you want to be featured in a future tutorial make sure to follow me on instagram and post a short cover of you playing any song that you've learned from any of the tutorials on my channel use that hashtag forever features in the description so that i can find it and the next feature spot could be you 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 along with 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