It's Nice to Have a Friend by Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
It's Nice to Have a Friend
Am, G
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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 it's nice to have a friend by Taylor Swift off her new lover album on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn school bell rings mock me so this song is gonna be so great if you're a beginner because it's so simple there's only two chords in the whole song and only one strumming or picking pattern which you can choose between but they sound the same so whichever one is easier for you would be the best one of pick and prior to this song I would have said that state of grace by Taylor Swift was probably the easiest tutorial on my channel but now that this song has been released I definitely think that this is going to be the easiest song that you'll see on my channel so with that being said let's go ahead and jump into it make sure that your guitar is in standard tuning for this song and put your capo on the third fret so that you can sing it in the same key as the original version if you don't have a capo you can always watch the video that I have here about how to make your own temporary capo or you can also just play this whole song through with the same chords and patterns and everything without a capo but it will just be a little bit lower than the original version let's go ahead and start off by learning the two chords you need to know for this song they are both open chords a very beginner friendly so let's go ahead and jump into that okay so like I said there's only two chords you need to know to play this whole song let's go ahead and take a look at the first one which is a minor which looks like this and sounds like this all right and the second and last chord you need to know to play the song is G which looks like this and sounds like this all right and those are the only two chords you need to know for this whole song all right so once you have both of those chords memorized and you're able to transition between them then we can go ahead and move on to our strumming patterns that you can use for this song love I call you babe have my back yeah every day so before we go through and learn the strumming pattern that you can use with this song I would suggest you go ahead and go through it first and make sure that you know where those chord changes are since this song is very off beat with where the chords are being changed so definitely practice through once with a one down strum pattern for a practice so I'm gonna go ahead and take you through that and show you what that's like so we've got our a minor chord on cuz that's the first chord in the song school bell rings walk me home sidewalk but in snow lost my love's give me one wanna hang out yes sounds like fun video he passed me a note sleeping it's nice to have a friend so fortunately for us that's pretty much the whole song the words change a little bit throughout the other verses but if you can do that through then you are familiar with where those core transitions aren't going to take place and from that you can jump straight from our practice pattern into our strumming pattern which is only a little bit different so let me go ahead and show you what that is so for this strumming pattern all you want to do is instead of strumming all of the strings down at once you want to take the bass note of your chord and strum that by itself first and then follow it up with the rest of the strings so for the a minor chord our lowest string is our fifth a string so all you want to do is pick that by itself and then follow up the rest of the strings after and that'll be your strumming pattern so we've got our bass note and then the rest of the strings all right and so you just want to practice that until you can hit just that bass note by itself and then follow it up if you're using a pick it can be a little bit hard to just pick that bass note so definitely give this a little bit of practice but once you can get it we're just going to make sure that we have this in rhythm so we've got so why don't you go ahead and put your a minor chord on and practice that with me we've got five alright and once you get it at that tempo now we just want to practice the same strumming pattern with our G chord so go ahead and put your G chord on and it's going to be exactly the same we're gonna play our bass note first which in this case is our low E string so snicks and then follow it through with the rest of the strings all right so for G we've got six so go ahead put your G chord on and try that with me we've got six all right so once you get the pattern down all you have to do is put the a minor and the G together and then play it in rhythm and you can play through the entire song so let's start with our a minor chord on we've got five then switch to your G chord and same thing six okay and now just switch back and forth a minor gee all right and that is the whole strumming pattern you can literally use this one strumming pattern for the entire song since the song does go back and forth between a minor and G for the entire thing and it's as simple as that you can play through the whole song right now or if you want to learn a picking pattern which is very similar to this strumming pattern except we're going to be using our hands instead of using a pick then go ahead and continue watching it love it give me one wanna hang out yeah sounds like fun video games you pass piano sleepy intense it's nice to have a friend alright so i zoom in a little bit so that we can learn this picking pattern it's very simple it's gonna sound just like the strumming pattern we just learned except we're going to be picking with our right hand so go ahead and put your a minor chord on since that's the chord that the song starts with and what we're gonna do is you're gonna put your thumb on the bottom string so in the a minor chord the bottom string is our fifth a chord okay and then I want you to take your next three fingers your pointer middle and ring finger and put that on the bottom three strings three two one okay so we've got our thumb on our fifth string and our other three fingers on our third second and first strings respectively so now what we want to do is you're going to pick just your thumb first then go ahead and pick the other three fingers all at the same time all right so going through you're a minor chord on and try that with me we've got five three two one five three two one so now just speed that up until you can get it at tempo so you've got one two three four and then you'll be seeing me too I like to take my pinky and kind of rest it here on the guitar by the sound hole just to give my hand a little stability while I'm picking this is something that you can do if you're a beginner or if it just helps you keep your hands steady I find it helpful myself so just thought I would pass that tip along but let's go ahead and jump into our next chord which is our G chord so for the G chord all you want to do is you're going to keep these three fingers on the same string so three two and one but you're going to move your thumb up one string to the bottom east string because this bottom east string is our base chord for our bass note for our G chord so go ahead and give that a pick and then you're going to do follow that up with the rest of your fingers so I've got six three two one all right and that's the whole picking pattern again you just want to speed this up until you can get it at tempo so let's give that a try we've got some one two three four all right so once you have both of those chords down we just want to practice transitioning between them now so again we're starting on our a minor chord we've got thumb all oh gee practice those transitions a minor straight into G school bell rings walk me home sidewalk truck covered in snow lost my gloves it give me one wanna hang out yeah sounds like fun video you pass me a known swimming intense and it's nice to have a friend all right awesome and if you can do that then you can play this same picking pattern for the entire song it's just like the strumming pattern it's the same throughout the whole thing so you can now pick whether you like the strumming pattern better or the picking pattern Petitte picking pattern better and whichever one you like better let's go ahead and choose that and we'll go ahead and play through the entire song it's nice all right so once you have those chords memorized and you can transition between them and you've picked between either the strumming or the picking pattern and you can go through that pretty easily without having to think about it too much then you are ready to play through the entire song I'm gonna do picking in my version just because that's how I prefer to play with my fingers so um yeah let's go ahead and put it together everything that we've learned and play through it's nice to have a friend by Taylor Swift good luck snow call my love call you babe have my back school bell rings walk me home sidewalk chalk covered in stone lost my gloves give me one while I hang out yeah sounds like fun video games you pass me an O swimmy intense nice to have a friend nice town light pink sky I'm on the roof Sun sinks down they'll curfew 20 questions we tell the truth you've been stressed out lately yeah me too something gave you the nerve to touch my hand have a friend it's nice to have a friend church bell rings carry me home rice on the ground looks like snow call my love call you babe have my back yeah every day feels like home stay in bed the whole weekend it's nice and tell a friend slicing tab a friend slice it have a friend thank you guys so much for watching this video I really hope that it helps you especially if you got our beginner it's really hard-pressed to find an entire song that's only two chords and one pattern so this is really really great for any of you guys who are beginners who are just starting out on your guitar journey so if that's you and you are interested in learning some more easy to play songs on guitar then definitely check out some of my other videos that are just as simple and really quick to learn also make sure to check me out on my social media sites if you would like to that's just where I get more in touch with my subscribers I do shoutouts so if you want to get a shout out like this person right here then that's where you would follow me for that I also do giveaways and polls and just kind of get you guys opinions on things that are coming up and yeah it's just a way to get more in touch with you guys as well as my merch store will be linked over here as well so if you are interested in buying any of my forever faithful merch such as this shirt that I'm wearing today music is forever definitely check out that link in the description box below and/or under this video and that will take you to my merch store where you can see my original designs and every purchase helps make this channel a little bit better so thank you so much for all of you who have already supported me I really appreciate your support thanks for watching this video again I really hope that it helped you and I will see you in my next one bye Oh