Last Night by Morgan Wallen Tutorial/Lesson
Last Night
C, D, Em
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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 Last Night by Morgan Wallen on the guitar. Here's a quick overview of everything I'll [music] be covering in this tutorial today. And with that being said, let's go ahead and get started. Now, the first thing I want to emphasize before we jump into anything else is that this is not going to be in your normal standard tuning. If you want to play it in the same key as Morgan Wallen's original song, you will want to tune your guitar one half step down. So, if you don't know how to do that, I did make a video right here of the easiest way to tune your guitar half step down. But basically, when all is said and done, your guitar strings should sound like this. We have E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat, B flat, and E flat. All right. So, the rest of this tutorial, my guitar will be in a half step down tuning to keep it in the original key. if you don't want to do your guitar half step down, you could play through this song with your strings just in standard tuning, but it will be one half step up from the original song. But with that being said, let's go ahead and talk about chords. All right, guys. So, once your guitar is tuned down a half step, you only need to know three different chord shapes to play through this song. And we're going to start with our C 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 to check that out. The next chord is our D major. And then the last chord shape is our E minor. And those are the only three chords you need to know to play through this song. So, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them because it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier. And if transitioning between your chords fast enough is something you're currently struggling with, I would recommend checking out my practice with me series where we go through this skill together in real time. Um, but with that being said, let's go ahead and talk a little bit about the strumming pattern. Now, as I always say, if you are brand new to playing guitar or you struggle with singing and playing at the same time, the first thing I would suggest is going through the entire song with a practice pattern, which is just a single downstrum on every chord change, and go ahead and sing through this song and just take a mental note of where all of those chord transitions are going to take place. It's really going to help you get used to the song so that we can move on to harder strumming. So, here's just a quick example of what that would look like. Last [music] night, [singing] we let the liquor talk. I can't remember everything [music] we said, but we said [singing] it all. right. So, even just from that, you can tell that the E minor is being held twice as long as the C and the D and things like that. So, go ahead and go through the entire song just like that with a single downstrum. This is actually something you can do right now if you visit my Patreon page. I do have this guide available to download and print out to help you get through this process a little bit faster and easier. But with that being said, let's go ahead and talk about the full strumming pattern. All right, guys. So, we're using an eighth note pattern. So, basically, you're just going to count that like this. We have 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and down up down down up. It's just that simple. You might be noticing this vertical line in between. That's going to show where we're going to change chords. So, we're actually going to change chords like halfway through this strumming pattern. So, basically, this song is so great because the entire song goes from C to D to E minor for the whole thing. And so basically this strumming pattern you want to use for your C and your D chord. So your C chord is going to be on the left side and then your D chord is going to be on the right side. So if we put our C chord down, we have the first half of the strumming pattern is down up. [music] Then you switch over to your D chord and finish it out. Down up. All right. So al together we have down [singing and music] up down up. And basically every time you come across the C and the D chords in this song, you're going to be using this strumming pattern where you break them up into half. Um, normally I would go ahead and teach you a second strumming pattern, but it kind of stems into this one. So this is kind of like strumming pattern two. But basically when you get to that E minor chord, you are going to change the strumming pattern up a little bit. So now this pattern we have 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and four and down up down up. All right. And so that pattern you want to use for your E minor chord anytime you come across it in the song. So let's go ahead and put that on. We have down [music and singing] up down up down up All [music] right. So super simple. And basically what you want to do is you're going to play this pattern through one time for that E minor. And you want to kind of tack it on to strumming pattern one where we practiced C and D. So the whole thing together is C chord down up [music and singing] to D chord down up to E minor down [music and singing] up up down up. All right. So basically we're taking both of these strumming patterns and combining them into one long strumming pattern that you can use to play through the whole song. So let's go ahead and try that a few times. 1 2 Ready go. C D E minor down [music and singing] up down down up down down up up [music] down up. And you can use the strumming [music] pattern just like the whole song just like this. [singing and music] Everything is You wish I was somebody. [singing and music] All right. And basically what you just played there, you apply for the entire song. It works for all of the verses, all of the choruses, the whole song, just like that. And if you want to stick with just strumming, then that is how you could play through the entire song. So again, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to memorize these strumming patterns and really get used to going back and forth between them and that CD E minor chord progression. The great thing about this song, like I said earlier, is that it is so repetitive that once you get that pattern down with those chord shapes, you can play through the whole song pretty easily. However, I know that most people are most interested in that really fancy solo tab that you hear at the beginning of the song and just kind of throughout the song. So, that is going to push this more into the intermediate side, but it's still totally doable. So, when you get back, we can talk about that solo tab. And guys, really quick before we move on, I wanted to say thank you so much for watching. If you are finding this video helpful, please make sure to give me a thumbs up down below, as well as subscribe to my channel because it does really help me out. And if you're somebody who's been struggling with anything that you've learned so far in this video or any of my other ones, I would suggest checking out my Patreon page where I offer exclusive perks including things like printable guitar guides, customizable backing tracks. You can vote on what kind of songs you want to see me teach here on my channel. And you can even send me videos of anything that you're working on and ask me any questions you have and I will send you a video response [music] back. So, if you would like to get your hands on some of these exclusive perks while simultaneously helping out my channel, then make sure to check out my Patreon page. I will link it in the description box down below. All right, guys. So, let's go ahead and break down this solo tab. Um, like I said earlier, this is going to push it a little bit more towards the intermediate side just because we are [music] going to be dealing with some slides and some pulloffs and a few advanced things like that. So, just a fair warning, but I think if you are a beginner, you could totally try to tackle this as well. So, basically what we're going to do is put our C chord shape down on our left hand. Um, and then just lift off your pointer finger. So, you just have your ring and your middle finger down. So now with your pick in your right hand, you're gonna pick the A string, [singing and music] D string, and G string. Of course, you know, they're D-tuned. So A [music] flat, D flat, G flat. So that's the first part of it. Then you want to come back and pick that A string again, [music] but this time as it's ringing, you're going to take this entire chord shape on your left hand and slide it up two frets to the fifth fret on your ring finger. Okay? So, what I want you to do is really focus on your ring finger and slide that entire shape up two frets. Okay? [music] All right? And your middle finger should go with your ring finger. [music] All right? So, now your middle finger here is on the fourth fret of the D flat string. So, that's perfect. And then open G flat again. All right. So, we have [music] So with that slide two, I'm only picking it once and then letting the slide like when you slide, you should be hearing that note. All right. And then again, you're going to take this chord shape and this time lift off your middle finger as well. So you just have that ring finger left. And you're going to slide it two frets again from the fifth fret to the seventh. All right? And the reason I wanted you to take your middle finger off is because now we're going to use our pointer finger to hold down the fifth fret. Now you want your first finger on instead of your second. Okay? So from the previous shape we have [music] take off your middle finger slide and then put down your pointer finger. [music] All right. So that's the first little part there. Okay. [music] So now we're going to go into more of these other slides. So now you're going to take your ring finger, move that over two strings, so you're on the seventh fret of the G flat string. You're going to pick that once. As it's ringing, you want to slide up to the ninth fret. So again, it's one of those things where you only pick it once, but you should hear both notes. That slide comes really fast also. All right. And then once you're up here, you want to slide back down to the seventh fret. So this is all one big slide just like that. 7 97 with your ring finger. Okay. And then after you're there, you just want to go to your first finger or your pointer finger. And we're going to have that on the fifth fret right behind your ring finger on the G flat string. Now you take off your ring finger and then you want to [music] slide down one fret to the fourth fret. [music] So, so far we've been sliding two frets. This one's just going to be one. And then once you're here, you just want to kind of kind of flick your string at with your first finger as you pull it off. All right. So, you should hear the open string when you pull off your first finger. So, it goes like this. All right. So, let's go ahead and do the first half here. We've got All right. [music] So, I know that that might seem a little difficult. Go ahead and pause and practice that first little section. Um, I will tell you once you get that first section down, the second section is so much easier to do because it's basically the same thing. So, a little bit faster. It would sound like this. All right. So, now let's go ahead and tackle the second half here. The first part of it, it's going to look exactly the same. So, just like earlier, and then this time when we do that quick little slide, instead of doing it on the G flat string, we're going to do it one string over on the D flat string. But the rest of it, you know, is the same. So, you're going to take your ring finger, slide up to the ninth, slide back down really fast. Okay? So, just like earlier, and then also just like earlier, take off your ring finger. You're left with your pointer on the fifth fret, [music] slide down one fret, and then pull off. All right, so it should look exactly like what we practiced earlier. We're just one string over. Okay, so the second half there goes like this. All right. So, you can see what we're doing with our left hand fingers is the same. We're just doing it one string apart each time. So, if you string them together, it sounds like this. All right. And then basically that just repeats itself throughout the entire song over and over again in conjunction with that CD E minor chord progression. All right. So that's the whole little tab thing. And that's just the easiest way that I found to play it. So go ahead and pause the video and just look at this tab and practice it as long as you need to. until you really get it under your belt. But of course, you know, learning this at all is extremely optional. You could totally just strum through the entire song. And I think it sounds great like that as well. Um, but basically once you have that down, we can come back and play through the song. [singing] everything. Want to jam to the rest of this 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 playalong guitar tutorials. I'll make sure to leave a 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 pretty similar vibe, but it's also just as fun to play. So, I'll see you over there. Bye.