Iris by Goo Goo Dolls Tutorial/Lesson
Iris
D, Em, G, A, Bm, Bsus2, F#m
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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 iris by google dolls on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you'd like to learn and really quick before we jump into the tutorial i wanted to take a second to thank today's sponsor burroughs guitars if you're looking for a quality beginner guitar that is both durable and beautiful while still having an affordable price tag consider a burroughs designed in and named after the five boroughs of new york city these are the perfect starter guitar for anyone excited to begin their music journey not only are they super easy and fun to play but these guitars are the best you'll find at this inexpensive price point with six different models and several finishes to choose from you'll be sure to find the one that fits your personality and musical tastes perfectly best of all all burrows guitars ship directly and exclusively from adorama a trusted site for all your creative needs so if playing guitar is something you or a loved one have been considering check out the links in the description box and get started today alright guys so i'm going to classify today's tutorial as more of a beginner slash intermediate level but first of all let's talk about the tuning you will need your guitar in standard tuning and we do not need a capo to play this in the original key i'm going to be showing you guys seven different chord shapes today and three of them are barre chords which is our b minor our b suspended 2 and our f minor so that's what kind of pushes this more into the intermediate level but i only have two different strumming patterns to show you and it's really only one that's played throughout most of the song so definitely the hardest thing about this song are all of those barre chords but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial and we'll start with those chords alright guys so i've zoomed in a little bit to take a closer look at these chords we're going to start with our d major which looks like this and sounds like this and by the way if you don't know how to read these chord charts that you're seeing on screen i do cover how to do that in my beginner series episode three so i'll make sure to link that right here for those of you who need it our next chord shape is our e minor after that we have our g chord next is our a chord and then now we're going to kind of go into our bar chord shape so the first one is our b minor next is our b suspended two and all you want to do for that is lift off your middle finger and then the last chord you need to know today is our f sharp minor and those are the seven chords you need to know to play this song so if any of these chords are new to you i would recommend to go ahead and pause the video and just take a few minutes to practice memorizing them as well as transitioning back and forth between them because it will make the rest of this tutorial and learning the rest of the song that much easier but once you've done that we can go ahead and take a closer look at some of the strumming patterns that you can use for this song so those of you familiar with my other tutorials will know that i always start you guys off with a practice pattern which is just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change i always suggest beginners start here as well as people who have trouble singing and playing at the same time because it's a good way to kind of get used to the song and know where those chord transitions are going to take place so let's go ahead and put the first verse here on screen just as an example and what we're gonna do is just one simple down strum on each of these chord changes and just take a mental note of which word you're singing whenever those chords are to changing you cause i know that you feel me somehow all right and even just with those first two lines you can already tell certain things like how we're holding out that g chord twice as long as all of the other chords and so basically i want you to just go through the song do the single down strum for the whole thing just so you're aware of where those chord transitions are going to be and this is actually something you can do right now i do have this entire song's guide available on my patreon page and you can download it and print it out right now and just kind of go through this process on your own i'll make sure link that in the description down below as well as in this i card right up here but anyways going through that process will really make it a lot easier to transition into the strumming pattern which is what i'll be covering right now alright guys so the first strumming pattern is kind of the main pattern that you'll hear through most of the song and as you can see it's just down down up down up and it's going to sound a little something like this all right so now that you've heard the rhythm let's go ahead and just play through it for a few times just to make sure that we have it down let's just put our d chords on because it's an easy chord to hold down and i'll count us in you jump in whenever you feel comfortable we're just gonna repeat this pattern a few times till we get the rhythm down one two three one ready go down down up down down up down down down down nice so i know that might have felt like it was going pretty quickly so if you need to make sure to pause the video rewind and practice that on your own until you get that up to speed and you're kind of internalizing that rhythm what we're going to do next now is put the chord transitions in and so what we have to realize is sometimes we're going to just have this pattern play one time through for a chord and then other times we're going to repeat it twice for a certain chord so for instance in the verses on d e minor and g you would play it one time for d and e minor so d e minor but then on g you would hold it out one twice three all right so again it's very similar to when we kind of sang through it earlier you'll notice that the g is going to be held out a little longer i'm gonna go ahead and put a little star by all of the chords that we're gonna hold this pattern out through twice but basically let's just kind of put everything together and do those chord transitions as well and you'll hear how the song is coming together and i'd give up you forever me somehow all right awesome so there you could see how the strumming pattern like the base pattern is staying the same through the whole thing we're just going to repeat it a few times for certain chords that's going to be true throughout the song even in the chorus we have b minor to a to g and again we're just doing the same thing where b minor and a are going to be once and then g will be held out twice so just a quick example would be like this and i don't want the world to see me cause i don't think all right cool so hopefully you can see how this pattern can basically be applied for the entire song however there is one other pattern i wanted to show you in the instrumental part so it's totally optional but i thought you might want to know how to play it so let's go ahead and jump into strumming pattern two alright guys so like i mentioned strumming pattern two is not used very much in the song at all but i wanted to show it to you because it's kind of iconic in that kind of instrumental bridge section so i figure it's easier for me to just show you which section i'm talking about it's the one that goes like this so basically i just wanted to kind of quickly go over how to play that part because this is the only part in the song that you hear that strumming rhythm so in that section we have b minor to be suspended two to g and what you're going to do is on our b minor chord we're going to play down up and then after when it's still ringing you want to just quickly mute those strings by kind of tapping them with your pick hand so down up down up mute then you go to your b suspended two so just lift up your middle finger same thing down up down up mute except this time afterwards we want to strum it down two more times down down all right so b minor is down up down a mute be suspended down up down a mute down down then you end on your g chord and this is kind of just up to you how you want to strum it what i like to do is just go down up up down up up down down up but really this is a chance for you to kind of experiment and grow as a musician by coming up with your own strumming pattern and now you'll repeat this strumming pattern kind of section four times so it's gonna go be minor be suspended down down g you're gonna do that four times in the instrumental part so um basically i just wanted to quickly touch on that strumming pattern for those of you who wanted to kind of play around with it but like i said the majority of the song can be played with strumming pattern one so with that being said let's go ahead and put everything we've learned together to play through the whole song two three one ready go and i'd give up forever but i don't wanna go home right now want to have fun jamming to 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 fast track and play along tutorials i'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below as well as in this i card right up here alright guys but that ends my tutorial for today so i really hope that it helped you if it did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on any other new tutorials another thank you goes out to burroughs guitars for sponsoring this video as well as a special shout out to all of my top patrons over on my patreon page i will have all of their names listed on screen right now and of course i'd like to recognize all my patrons on patreon for making tutorials just like this impossible you guys are awesome 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 of things coming up i'll pull you guys on what you want to learn next and i'll even do giveaways on there a few times a year so make sure to check it out but that concludes the tutorial today so thank you so much for watching i really hope that it helped and i will see you in my next one bye you