Hey There Delilah by Plain White T's Tutorial/Lesson
Hey There Delilah
D, F#m, Bm, G, A
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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 hey there Delila by The Plain White T's on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn so the song is not going to be way too hard if you're a beginner with the exception of a few Barre chords so to play the song in the original key you won't need a capo and my guitar is in standard tuning on top of that you'll need to know five different chords two of which are Barre chords however if Barre chords is something you're struggling with I have a TMT on how to get better at practicing those in addition to that we have one strumming pattern and one picking pattern to play this song so with that being said let's go ahead and jump into an overview of what I'm going to be teaching you in this tutorial so like I said this song is not going to be super hard if you're a beginner however I do think that if you have a little bit more experience with the guitar this will probably come a little bit easier to you one of the reasons is because we've got five chords and two of them are Barre chords so for our chords we've got D F sharp minor B minor G and a so if you don't know how to play any of those chords go ahead and skip to this time here and I will show you how to play through those chords however if you are familiar with them then let's go ahead and skip to what I'm going to teach you for the strumming pattern now the way you hear this song being played in the original is of course with picking but I did come up with a strumming pattern for those of you who prefer strumming it's gonna sound a little something like this and you're just gonna play through that pattern twice for every chord change in the song so if you kind of already have the feeling of that strumming pattern then that's great however if you do need a little bit more practice with it and you'd like to go through an example of what it sounds like within the song then make sure to skip to this time here where I will go through that strumming pattern in a little more detail for you and then of course the last thing I will teach you is the picking pattern which is the most accurate to how to actually play it like The Plain White T's did and the picking pattern is going to sound a little something like this all right so if you want to learn how to do that picking pattern then go ahead and skip to this time here and I will explain it in more detail and give you guys examples of what it sounds like within the song however if you feel like you're pretty familiar with it all already and you just kind of want to jump to the end where we go through the whole song and you want the chords and lyrics and everything go ahead and skip to the play through here at the end where I will go through the whole song with you and have everything you need to know on screen in front of you but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the more detailed parts of the tutorials and let's start off with the chord alright so like I said there are five chords you need to know to play through this whole song and we'll go ahead and start with our D chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got our F sharp minor which is one of our bar chords that looks like this and sounds like this next we've got our B minor chord which is another Barre chord and it looks like this and sounds like this then we've got our G chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is a which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the only five chords you need to know for this song like I said earlier remember if you're having trouble with bar chords make sure to check out my TMT on how to practice and get better at those alright so once you have those chords memorized and you're really familiar with them go ahead and make sure that you can transition between them pretty quickly because if you are wanting to play this song at tempo it does kind of transition a little bit quickly so if you need more help I have a GMT tutorial here about how to practice that and how to get better at that but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern that you can use with this if you're brand new to guitar one of the first things I always suggest that you do is to go through the entire song that you're trying to learn and just go through with a practice pattern which is just gonna be one single down strum on every single chord change this is really gonna help you get more familiar with the song and know where those transitions are going to be that way you can kind of internalize it so when you get a harder strumming pattern it becomes a lot easier rhythmically so let's go ahead and go through an example of what this practice pattern sounds like so I'm gonna go ahead and put my D chord on since that's the first chord in the song and we're just gonna go ahead and go through an example of what this looks ound like so go ahead and strum your D chord down once followed by your f-sharp minor chord let's D F sharp minor in New York City and you look so pretty yes you do we can't shine as bright as you I swear it's alright sorry about was singing the song is super low for my range but something I did want to point out there is you'll notice the chord changes are pretty you know on tempo for most of the time one place that you do want to be careful of is when you go from G to A to B minor it does go a little bit faster there so we've got D one two three four F sharp minor two three four D two three four F sharp minor two three four B minor two three four G 2 4 B minor so here you can see it's just kind of transitioning a little bit quicker there and that is going to apply for the whole song regardless of what you're doing like if you're strumming or picking or whatever that is going to be a quicker transition so just keep that in mind while we go through the rest of these patterns alright so once you have that practice pattern down and you've kind of gone through the song and you're familiar with where those chord transitions are going to be let's go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern that you can use with this song so here it is as you can see it's down up down up now what you're going to want to do is play through this pattern twice for every chord change except for where it goes faster from B minor to G to a kind of like we practiced in the practice pattern but let's go ahead and go through an example of what this sounds like I've got my D chord on since that's the first chord of the song and I'm just going to play through this strumming pattern we've got down up down down down up down all right and that's the whole pattern so why don't you go ahead and put your D chord on and try that with me 1 2 3 4 all right great super easy right so now what you want to do is you want to start practicing it with the chord transitions so what we want to do is play through the strumming pattern twice for each chord so put your D chord on we're gonna play through twice down down up down up then you switch to your next chord which is our F sharp minor same pattern down alright perfect and once you have that rhythm kind of internalized all you have to do now is speed it up a little bit to get a tap tempo so let's go ahead and try to speed this up and see if we can get that down 1 2 3 4 down down down so again I pointed this out during the practice pattern but just in case you've skipped over to strumming pattern one I do want to reiterate that the G to the a chord is switches a little bit faster so in that instance you just want to play through this pattern once for each of those chords so yes you do with the minor down down up down up down down up g you play through this once down down I've done it switch to a down down I've known about to be minor twice all right so just keep that in mind remember some of these patterns are gonna go a little bit faster so whenever you're going from your GT or a chord in that context you do want to make sure you're only playing through this pattern once but every other time you want to play through twice for each chord so again like I said at the beginning this strumming pattern can be applied for the whole song however he listened to the original song it is very pic heavy so that's actually how I like to play through my cover so let me go ahead and jump into what the picking pattern looks like that you can use for this all right so I've zoomed in so we can take a closer look at this picking pattern if you're unfamiliar with my other tutorials I do like to refer to my strings when I'm teaching picking as numbers so you can see down here what I've done is labeled my strings as far as letter to number correspondence I guess so our low E string is six and that goes all the way up to our high E string which is one okay so that's how I'm going to present this tutorial so basically this picking pattern is not going to be too difficult because it does follow the same pattern throughout the song so let's go ahead and start with our first chord which is our D chord so go ahead and put your D chord on now what I want you to do is with your thumb on your picking hand you want to put your thumb on the lowest string in each chord so for our D chord our lowest string is going to be our fourth D string and then with your pointer finger and your middle finger I want you to put those on the third and second strings so our G and B strings okay so now I've got this four D and now the way that this pattern is going to work is you're just gonna alternate between picking your thumb and your pointer and middle finger at the same time so we've got thumb by itself then point your middle together all right so you can kind of already hear the song kind of forming now so what we're gonna do is alternate between them back and forth four times one two three four then you're gonna switch to your next chord which is our F sharp minor and now these two fingers throughout the rest of the song they're never going to move from the third and second string the G and B strings okay they're always going to be there for this whole song what you're going to change is your thumb because your thumb is gonna be playing the bass note of each chord so now with our F sharp minor chord our bass note is actually going to be our sixth string and so you want to move your thumb from the fourth to the sixth string but the pattern is still the same okay so we've got thumb pointer middle and you want to do that four times so we've got one two three four now if you know Barre chords are something that you're having trouble with sometimes I don't like to do Barre chords when I'm picking either is something that you can do is you'll notice since we're only picking these three strings you don't need to hold down the entire F minor chord so what I like to do in my cover is I actually only hold down the sixth string with my first finger on the second fret of the sixth string and then I also hold down the third and second strings with my middle and ring finger so my middle finger is on the 2nd fret of the third string and my ring finger is on the 2nd fret of the second of B string alright so now I'm our F sharp minor went from this Barre chord to just this so if you find that easier to play then I would go ahead and suggest doing that I definitely find it easier to play but the pattern what you're right picking in is still the same we've got alternating thumb with our other tipping and again you can do this 4 times 1 2 3 so now let's go ahead and practice going from our D chord into our F sharp minor chord in this pattern we've got 1 2 3 4 F sharp minor 2 3 4 back to d2 three f-sharp minor two three four all right so you can see there you've already played the introduction to this song let's go ahead and go through the rest of the chords you need to know for this song and I'll go ahead and show you what we're gonna be doing with our picking hand so the next chord we're gonna come across is our B minor chord so for B minor our lowest note is going to be our fifth a string so go ahead and move move your thumb to the fifth a string but like I said earlier these two fingers are not moving so now we've got five three and two all right after that we'll have our G chord again our G chord has the base note of this low E string so go ahead and move your thumb to the 6th string and so this will be six three all right and then the last chord you need to know is our a chord again our a chord the bass note is going to be our fifth a string so go ahead and move your thumb back to the fifth string and we've got five three two all right so now that you know which strings are going to be picking for all of the chords that you'll see in this song let's go ahead and try to string some of them together so let's go ahead and start back at the beginning we've got D one two three four F sharp minor two three four back to D three four f-sharp minor two three four here we got our B minor chords a new chord for us 5 3 2 and then here remember from G to a it goes faster so for G and a we're only going to pick this pattern through twice so we've got our G chord on six 3:06 did you go to a 5 3 2 5 3 2 then go back to B minor and then we'll play this 4 times 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 all right so let's do that last part one more time starting with our B minor chord we've got to play it through one two three four go to G twice a twice back to B minor two three four a two three all right perfect so basically that's the entire picking pattern for this song you're going to want to kind of keep the same principles so again your pointer and middle finger on your picking hand are never going to stray away from our third and second string and the only one that you are going to move is your thumb and you're gonna kind of rotate that between the fourth fifth and sixth strings alright so again this is all on screen in front of you so go ahead and practice how each chord is going to be laid out with this picking pattern and then once we have that down I wanted to go through a few little extra things that you can add to spice up this picking pattern and make it sound a little bit closer to the original song now if you want to take that picking pattern and play it through for the whole song it will sound very close to the original however there are a few little extras that you can add in there that I think really add to the song to make it sound a little bit more accurate so the first chord I want to address is our B minor chord so then put your B minor chord down as you remember we're doing our fifth string and then I'm serving seven strings with our picking hand right but instead of picking this through four times one two three four sometimes you'll hear throughout the song they'll have a walk down and the way that they're doing that is you'll play it through three times one two three then on this fourth time on your cord hand go ahead and let go of your first finger okay so you're not holding that string down anymore but your picking hand is still the same so now we've still got five three two so you're going from this to this so let me go ahead and put this in the context of the song just so it kind of makes more sense and you can hear where to put it starting at the beginning of the song we've got da there Delilah what's in there sharp minor two three four hundred thousand miles and you look so pretty yes you and then here on the work do is where we're gonna do this walk down so we've got our B minor chord and we're gonna play through it three times yes you do two three then take off that first finger and then play it open and then go to your G chord okay did you hear that how that b-minor walked down kind of lead into the G chord so again we've got I'm a thousand miles away but girl tonight you look so pretty yes you beat minor to 3G all right so throughout these song throughout the cover at the end it's kind of hard to know when to do that walk down versus when to hold the B minor threw for four beats so the way I'm going to kind of know take that for you guys is I'm gonna put a little asterisk next to the V minor chord and every time you see a b-minor chord throughout the cover and it has an asterisk next to it that means all I want you to do there is we're gonna play it through with the walk down which means three times with your first finger on one two three and then on the last time take your first finger off okay so every time I want you to do that you'll have a little asterisk next to the B minor chord and then the other chord that you can kind of dress up is our a chord so go ahead and put your a chord on so here we would do the same thing we've got our five three in two and normally you would just play that four times one two three four but if you want to sound a little bit closer to the song something you can do there to really easily dress it up is you're still going to be holding your a chord on your left hand but on your right picking hand what I want you to do is pick through it only twice so we've got five three two five three two and then on the last two beats I want you to go to the second and first string okay so you're taking your pointer and your middle finger going from third and second string and you're moving up to second and first string so for our a code we've got five three two and then switch five to one five two so to hear the difference there and that's just a really easy way to kind of get it to sound a little bit more like the original song so let me go ahead and show you where that would be yes you do we've got B minor and we're gonna do that walk down so we've got 1 2 3 open go to G to a minor 2 3 4 then a 2 and then switch so it really helped if you heard it in context with the song so let me go ahead and say the lyrics for you tonight girl you look so pretty yes you do walk down G times where can't shine as bright as you I swear true all right and again how you're gonna know when to do that throughout the song is again I'm going to take the a chord and put a little asterisks next to it that's a really hard word to say asterisk so every time you see an A in my cover with an asterisk next to it that means I want you to do to beat on five three two and then the remaining two beats on five two one all right so when we put this all in context with the cover it will let make a lot more sense so definitely go ahead and pause and practice this picking pattern and then once you're ready we'll go through the entire song and play through everything together and then I'll denote for you when we're going to add those little extra things into our picking time all right so once you've practiced through you've got those chords memorized you can do the strumming pattern if that's what you want to do and you practice that picking pattern let's go ahead and put everything we've learned together to play the whole song I'll have everything like the lyrics and the chords listed in front of you on screen so let's go ahead and jump into it this is hey there Delila by the Plain White T's good luck just because included what do you making history all right so that was my tutorial for hey there Delila by the Plain White T's thank you guys so much for watching if this helped you make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to leave a comment of any other songs that you'd like to see tutorials for in the future and make sure to follow me on any of my social media sites if you would like to that's just what I do behind the scenes looks pulls sometimes I'll do an occasional giveaway and this is also where I like to find people for my for ever feature segment this week we've got Katie and her daughter singing seven years by Lucas Graham let's give it a listen so if you want to be featured in my next tutorial make sure that you follow me on instagram at ex forever faithful ex and go ahead and post a short cover of you playing any of the songs that you've learned from any of my tutorials and make sure to use that hashtag for ever features in the description so that I can find it and the next feature 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 shirts if you liked it make sure to check out this and all my other designs in my merch store which are linked down below in the description and you can find it under this video as well again though thanks so much for watching I really hope this helped you and I will see you in my next video hi you