Let It Be by The Beatles Tutorial/Lesson
Let It Be
C, G, Am, F, Em, Dm, Bb
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Video transcript
hey everyone it's Ellen here and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Let It Be by the Beatles on my bamboo gc36 Indie classical guitar so if you're interested in this beautiful design as well as checking out any of the other ones I will make sure to link their website down below I wanted to give a huge shout out and thank you to my patrons for voting on this song as this month's Patron picks so if you want a little bit of voting power in the songs you see me Teach here on my channel make sure to check out my patreon page I will link that down below here's a quick overview of everything I'll be covering in this video today and with that being said let's go ahead and get started all right guys so you only need to know seven 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 sing 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 you need to not is our G major we also have our a minor then there's our F major we also have our E minor then there's our D minor and then the last chord you need to know is our B flat and those are the seven chords 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'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier and I know this is a skill I always tell you guys to prepare for but in this song in particular it's very important to make sure that you can transition these chords pretty quickly you'll see why as we go through it so just make sure to pause and take as much time as you need to do that if this is a skill you're currently struggling with I do have an entire practice with me playlist right here where we go through this skill in real time together um but once you have those chords under your belt then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that you can use for this song all right guys so as I always say if you are a beginner at guitar or you're somebody who struggles with playing guitar while singing at the same time the first thing I would suggest doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and play through the whole thing with a single down strum on every chord change as you sing through the song and just take this time to really get used to what word you're singing when those chords are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look like when I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom let it be all right so already you can see there that little walk down at the end F E minor D Minor C is really quick transitions you'll see that again in other parts of the song so like I said make sure you got those transitions down but essentially you would want to do this for the entire song and just really make sure you know where those chords are going to be changing like what word you're singing things like that and this actually something you do right now if you check out my patreon page I do have this entire guide available to download and print out so I'll make sure to leave that link in the description for you um but once you've done that we can talk about a more full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so the strumming pattern I would suggest as you can see we're going to be counting it in a 16th note pattern so it's going to sound like this we have 1 E and A 2 E and A 3 E and A 4 E and A 1 2 and a three four and a down down down up down down down up all right fairly straightforward there um before we continue I'm going to put a little vertical line right in the middle here and basically what this is going to represent is where we want to change chords so the full strumming pattern does cover a full measure but what we're actually going to do to play through this song is we're going to only have a half measure per chord all right so for an example let's go ahead and bring up the first verse on our c chord we're going to play the left half so we have down down down up you switch to your G chord finish out the measure on the right half down down down up same with our next two chords A minor down down up F down down up all right and just to finish out the verse we would go back to C down down down up G down down up and then here for the Let It Be walk down part I would just do a single down strum for each of these chords F E minor D Minor C all right so when you string it all together and add some lyrics it'll sound like this we have C down down of G down down up a minor f c G single strum all of these when I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom let it be all right so that's an example of how all of the verses will sound let's go ahead and go through a chorus so you can see what that looks like so we're starting with our a minor chord here and the chord order is going to be different but the way you play the strumming is exactly the same so we have a minor down down up to G down down down up F to C stay on C to G and then same walk down just like this good job let it be let it Be whisper words of wisdom let it be all right so basically this song goes back and forth between verses and choruses so we've essentially played the strumming pattern for the entire song so you would just want to make sure to practice that but yeah this is the basic strumming pattern that I would recommend for the entire song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get that strumming pattern under your belt um the Rhythm shouldn't be too hard to count I think it's more going to be transitioning those cords fast enough like I said earlier so um just make sure to take as much time as you need to get that strumming pattern down um but if you're familiar with the song There is kind of that pretty piano line throughout and I do have a simple picking pattern that kind of mimics that so if you're up for it I would love to show you this picking pattern that you can use for this song so let's go ahead and talk about that hey really quick in addition to the printable guide we've been looking at did you know I also offer customizable backing tracks polls for What songs you want to learn next and even video chats if you're having trouble you can unlock all these perks and more if you become a patron which helps me grow my channel and make more videos just like this one or if patreon's not your thing you can still help me out a lot by giving me a thumbs up and leaving a comment below to help me reach more people in YouTube's recommendations it only takes a second but makes a huge difference so thanks so much and let's get back into it all right guys so this picking pattern is going to be fairly simple um basically the general rules of picking is on your left hand we're still going to be holding the same cord shapes that we've already been practicing but on your right hand we are going to assign our fingers to a string so what I want you to do is take your index your middle finger and your ring finger and we're going to put those on the bottom three strings and they're going to live here as we do this picking pattern your thumb is going to cover the base note or the root note of all of these chords so it's going to be on the six Fifth and fourth strings okay so throughout this entire thing you want to make sure that those fingers your thumb is the only one moving and these three live down here okay so starting with our c chord what you want to do is we're going to pick the root note the C which is our a string with your thumb then you're going to pick your index finger by itself and then you want to pick both your middle and your ring finger on the low two strings together so we have and then you want to come back and just kind of close it out so it's kind of like an arpeggio we have all right so if you can get used to that motion we are going to copy paste it for all of these other chords so the next chord is our G chord so now your thumb's going to move to this low E string the sixth string but the patterns the same we have 6 3 2 1 3 then for a minor we go back to our fifth string 5 3 2 1 3 and then for f we're going to go here to the sixth string again all right so so far we have okay to finish out the verses we're going to go back to our C to G and then here for this little walk down we're going to mimic that single strum pattern we're going to go f e minor D Minor to C okay so what I'm doing there is for the F chord I'm just picking these bottom three strings with the base root note which is the sixth E string so I'm just picking them all together the same time and then same with E minor and then for D Minor your thumb moves to the fourth D string okay so you're picking 4 3 2 1 and then when you get back to C you would go back to the regular picking pattern all right so let's go ahead and go through the entire verse we've got c g a minor f c g f e minor D Minor C when I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom let it be all right um just really quick sometimes on that F chord I will separate the base and the top three strings so I'll go like but that is a little bit more um of a rush you know so if you're already struggling with the picking I would just stick to the the single strum like that or the single pick um okay so let's go ahead and now go to the chorus this is going to be the same picking pattern so you can see here on a minor we have then we have G then we have F then we go to C back to C to G and then F E minor D Minor C let it be let it be let it be let it be whisper words of wisdom let it be all right and yeah like I said earlier the whole song of goes back and forth between the verse and the chorus and that's how you would play through it with picking all right now really quick I know I've been talking about how the whole song goes from verse to Chorus back and forth but there is going to be that section in the Middle where we going to go through a lot of these cord shapes pretty quickly um leading into the solo so for that part if you're doing picking or if you're doing strumming I would just do a single strum for each of those chords so basically we have our F E minor D Minor C then we go to B flat a minor G F C all right so those chords will come at you really quickly so that's something that I would spend a lot of time making sure that you can get those transitions down for yeah that is how I would suggest strumming or picking the entire song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and if finger picking is something that you are interested in doing just make sure to pause and practice for as long as you need to to really get that hand ey coordination down of doing the arpeggiated picking pattern it can take a lot of practice so just make sure to take as much time as you need to do that um but once you get back we can put everything we've learned together to play through the song One 2 ready go when I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom it be Want to Have Fun Jimmy out to the rest of this song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page where we can unlock access to this as well as all my other FastTrack 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 super similar Vibe and feel but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye