Losing My Religion by R.E.M. Tutorial/Lesson
Losing My Religion
F, G, Am, C, Dsus2, Am7, Em, Dm, Am/B
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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 Losing My Religion by RAM 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 van Goa I will actually be featuring their basic bg1 guitar model in this video today so if you like what you see make sure to check out the link in the description box down below as well as in this icard right up here alright guys so I'm going to go ahead and label this song in intermediate level just because there are a handful of chords as well as the strumming which can be a little bit hairy but first of all let's talk about our guitar you will need it to be in standard tuning and we do not need a capo to play this song in its original key I have 10 different chord Shades to show you today including one bar chord which is our F major chord however I will show you a way you can get away with not barring chords for that one and then on top of that I have three strumming variations that I kind of wanted to go over with you guys the last one being like full in-depth strumming pattern so with all of that being said let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial and we'll start with the chords alright guys so like I said we need to know 10 different chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to go ahead and start with our bar chord which is f 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 video right here for those of you who need it um like I said that F chord is our only bar chord however if bar chords are hard for you you can also replace that with an F major seven which looks like this and sounds like this so if you want to you can replace all of the barred F's with this F major 7 shape however it will kind of change the overall feel of what this song sounds like but that's an option for you the next chord I want to show you is our G chord after that we have our a minor we also have C we have our D suspended two foreign we've got an A minor seven we have E minor we have D minor and then the last chord is our a minor over B and those are the ten chords you need to know to play the song Alright guys so although most of these chord shapes are not super difficult they might be a little unfamiliar to you based on how many songs you've played before so make sure to pause the video and just take a few minutes to memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them this song Moves super quickly so you want to make sure that you can definitely transition between these chords pretty quickly as well it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you but once you've done that we can go ahead and talk about the strumming patterns that I would suggest for this song all right so if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials I would suggest starting out with a practice pattern which is just a simple down strum and you want to do this for every single time you see a chord change this is especially important for people who want to play and sing at the same time or who have trouble with that so all you want to do basically let's go ahead and bring up the first verse is you want to go through the entire song do a single down strum on each of these chord changes and sing through the song and take a mental note of which word or which syllable you're singing when you're doing that down strap is bigger than you and you are not me the lengths that I will go to all right so basically you get the idea you just want to do that for the entire song and just be really familiar with where those chord transitions are going to take place this is something you can actually do right now I have this whole guide available on my patreon page to download and print out and practice on your own so make sure to check that out if you're interested I will link that down below however with that being said let's go ahead and go over the easy pattern that you can do for this song Alright guys so the easiest strumming pattern I could suggest for this song as you can see is just down down up up down up and it's going to sound like this foreign ER I would recommend just staying right here with this strumming pattern and all you want to do is repeat it two times for each cord except for some places where the cords transition a little quicker but first of all let's just go over this pattern what you want to do is we're starting on our a chord and you just want to do this pattern two times for a minor so we have down down up up down up repeat down up up down up then you go to your next chord E minor same thing down down up down up twice all right so basically you could use this pattern through most of the song so let's go ahead and just practice it a little bit on our a minor chord I'll count us in you jump in whenever you feel comfortable one two ready go down down up up down up down down up up down and foreign so let's go ahead and bring that first back in and speed it up just a little bit so we can get it at Tempo we have down down up up down up down down up up down back to a minor and back to E minor you got it bigger than you and you are the things all right so you can kind of see how that fits in with the song again if you're a beginner a guitar and strumming is super difficult for you this is something that you could apply for the entire song however there are certain portions where you're gonna have to transition chords a little quickly so for example let's go ahead and bring up the chorus it's a good example of that thought that I heard you laugh hot butter Ed okay so right there we're going from F to g a little bit quicker so you don't have time to hold that whole pattern out for the F chord the second time around so what you want to do is kind of take the first half of this pattern and double it up okay so the second strumming pattern that I want to show you kind of goes hand in hand with the first string pattern so it's down down up down down up with the vertical line in the middle which is where we're going to change chords so all together the Rhythm would sound like this foreign and remember we want to use this with cord pairings that go a little faster so for example in the course we go from F to G really fast so we're going to go f on the left side down down up to G on the right side down down up moving on in the course you do that again with your C to your D suspended up all right so anywhere in this song wherever the chord transitions go a little bit faster you want to use strumming pattern two otherwise stick with strumming pattern one and you can use these two strumming patterns to play through the whole song So for an example let's just go through the chord so you can hear what that sounds like starting on our F thought that I heard you laughing thought that I heard you see I think I thought all right so you can kind of see how we're mixing both of those strumming patterns in together to play through the song now if you are somebody who finds this to be relatively simple and you feel like you can handle a little bit more there is something really cool you can add into this strumming pattern to make it sound a little more rhythmic and that's what we call chucking which is basically you're taking the pick and when you strum down you kind of want to strum with a little bit of like force but you also want to take the side of your hand and just kind of mute and dampen the strings as you go down so it should make kind of like a crunching sound like this all right you should be able to kind of still distinguish which chord you're playing but it's going to be just a kind of like a chucking like hitting motion with your strings so if you want to add this in I would suggest adding it to the second down strum and strumming pattern one so now instead of down down up up down up we have down Chuck up up down up all right so when you speed it up and get it at Tempo it sounds really cool and very rhythmic we've got down up up down up all right so when you start putting those chord transitions back in it really drives the song a lot more it makes it sound a lot more rhythmic kind of like the original so for example let's bring verse 1 back up again and I'm going to show you what this sounds like with strumming pattern one and two but with that checking Motion in it okay together all right so now if you can handle doing that kind of chucking motion and you enjoy the way that sounds and it seems pretty easy of a technique for you to get down that's really going to help you out because the next trimming pattern I want to show you is the full Like official strumming pattern that you can hear in the song so let's go ahead and jump into strumming pattern three and while we're on the topic of strumming this is the perfect time to thank the other sponsor for today's video Black Mountain picks Black Mountain picks is known for their Innovative spring design that connects the pick to the thumb holder part and this is actually one of his newer models not only does it have an extra tight kind of grip here but it's also on a thin pick so those of you who are familiar with my videos in the past have known that I've been working with black mountain pigs for a while now and he just launched the thin gauged pick which I'm a big fan of because I almost always play with thin picks that's what I've been using throughout this video so if you are interested in getting one for yourself or a guitar player in your life make sure to check out the link in the description box down below as well as in this icard right up here alright guys so now let's go ahead and talk about the full strumming pattern that you can kind of hear in the song as you can see it's pretty long the whole thing goes down down up down up up down up down up down up and the whole pattern is going to sound like this all right guys so this is one of those longer 16th note strumming patterns so again if you're a beginner you can totally just stick with strumming patterns one and two to play through the song however if you are up for this rhythmic challenge let's go ahead and break it down a little bit now because the strumming pattern is so extensive you only have to play it one time for each chord but you really have to make sure you know the Rhythm behind it so let's go ahead and break this down a little bit let's go ahead and put our a minor chord down you're gonna go down up down up down up up down up down up all right so the full rhythm is like this right so basically whenever you're doing a fast strumming pattern like this you always want to keep your strumming hand moving okay that's really going to help you kind of keep the Rhythm so if we pull up the first verse what again what you want to do is do this whole full strumming pattern one time for each of these cords so on a minor we have down up down up down up up down up down up then go to your E minor up down up down up down up a minor E minor so if you are more advanced or further along in your guitar journey I would definitely try to recommend just feeling the Rhythm instead of like really thinking about all the downs and up strums once you hear the Rhythm and kind of internalize it it makes it a lot easier so just give it a listen we've got try your best to just kind of like take that rhythm in and just feel it in your bones as opposed to like reading every single down and up strum but of course that will take time in practice but anyway we're almost done with this pattern basically what you want to do now is add those Chucks that we practiced earlier you want to add that into this strumming pattern as well okay so I'm going to go ahead and Mark which down strums we're going to Chuck on so now we have down Chuck up down up Chuck up up Chuck up down up down up all right so lots of levels to this strumming pattern if it's overwhelming at all just make sure to pause and practice on your own um but basically you want to do this one time through for each chord so on the verses we have a minor spider right so with this strumming pattern you can use it for the entire song but just like with our other strumming patterns there's that caveat of when those chord transitions are coming at you a little bit faster you do have to kind of split this pattern up a little so I'm going to go ahead and add a vertical line here at the end and that's just going to represent where we're going to switch chords whenever those chords are transitioning a little faster so let's go ahead and bring the chorus back up because that's a good example we've got our F chord foreign we have that vertical line that's where you would go to your G so F Chuck up down up Chuck up and then switch to G and finish it out down right so without stopping it sounds like this all right then you'd keep going okay so basically I understand that this strumming pattern can be a lot coming at you especially if you're new to guitar so again you can always stick with strumming pattern one and two but another piece of advice that I wanted to give you guys is that strumming patterns especially the ones you see here online a lot of times it's just other musicians figuring it out for themselves and like sharing it with people so I kind of like to think of strumming as like very like tailorable to the person playing guitar as long as you understand the basics of how to count rhythms and how to do strumming patterns you know you can always come up with ones that suit you better or that you feel more naturally whenever you're playing so for example in this particular song it's pretty hard for me to sing the song and do the full strumming pattern with the checking all at the same time without messing up a lot so what I've done is I actually simplified this strumming pattern into one that I feel feel more comfortably so if you're interested in learning my modified version of this strumming pattern right here it is it's down down up up down up up down up up down up and it sounds like this so when you put this in context with a song it sounds so similar to the full strumming pattern but for me I found it a lot more natural when I was playing through this song and it was so much easier for me to sing along with so this is actually what I'll be doing in my cover play through here at the end but basically anytime that you can modify a strumming pattern you should go ahead and do it if it feels more comfortable for you or it's easier for you to play or sing to I always suggest that as long as you're not breaking the rules of Rhythm and music then totally fine so with my streaming pattern here what I like to do is go down check up up Chuck up up up Chuck up so basically I'm kind of chucking every down strum that I do and therefore I don't have to remember which ones to check and which one's not too because they're all kind of chucked and that kind of helps me when I play through the song so we have down up up down up up down up all right so when you put that in the song I think it sounds very similar this is all right so I think that's easier if you want to adopt my modified strung pattern by all means please go ahead but again my main point with this is that you should always just go with whatever string pattern you find most natural for you number one tip for the day but anyways um that is how you can play through the entire song whether you want to do the easier strumming patterns or the more full strumming patterns is up to you I think they both sound really great so with all of that being said let's go ahead and jump into the playthrough ready go figure wanna have fun playing through 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 this icard right up here alright guys with that into my video for today I really hope that it helps if it did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well subscribe to this channel that way you never miss out on any other new guitar tutorials another huge thank you goes out to today's sponsors van Goa and Black Mountain picks thank you guys so much for sponsoring today's video and a special shout out goes out to my top patrons over on my patreon page I'll make sure to have all of their names listed on screen right now and of course a huge thank you to all of my patrons for supporting my channel and making videos 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 at things I'm working on I'll pull you guys on what songs 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 I think that ends the video today so thank you so much for watching I've really hope that it helped and I will see my next one coming out really soon really soon bye