Love Story by Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
Love Story
C, G, Am, F, D, A, Bm
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Video transcript
do hey everyone my name is ellen and today i'm going to be showing you guys how to play love story by taylor swift on the guitar so stay tuned this is something you'd like to learn all right guys and before we jump into the tutorial i did want to just give a big shout out and thank you to today's sponsor black mountain pigs are thumb picks that use an innovative spring design to hold the pick securely to your thumb i've loved using these recently because not only are they super comfortable affordable and durable but they don't slide or flip around on your thumb like other thumb picks i've used in the past these picks fit multiple playing styles and are perfect for when you want to alternate between picking and strumming with ease that makes them great for beginners and professionals alike no matter what stage you're at in your guitar journey best of all you'll get fast shipping and awesome customer service with every purchase so if you're interested in trying these out for yourself make sure to check out the link in my description and never lose another pick while playing your guitar again alright guys so let's go ahead and start out by saying i think that this song is going to be pretty beginner friendly especially if you want to just stick to strumming however if you do want to attempt that picking pattern the way that you hear in the original song that would kind of bump this up to more of an intermediate level so just be aware of that but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into what i wanted to show you in this tutorial all right guys so if you want to sing this in the original key that taylor swift sings it in make sure your guitar is in standard tuning and go ahead and put your capo on the second fret if you don't have a capo you can play this tutorial through the way that i'm teaching it without one it'll just be a little bit lower than the original song in addition to that i am going to be showing you guys seven chords to play through this song and two of those are barre chords which are f and b minor so this is a good song to work on bar chords with and we also have two strumming patterns that i want to show you as well as three variations of picking patterns but don't let any of this intimidate you it is one of those things where the more you ease into it the easier it gets so let's go ahead and jump into what those chords look like all right guys so let's go ahead and take a closer look at these chords you need to know like i said there are seven and we're going to go ahead and start with our c chord which looks like this and sounds like this from there we're going to jump to our g chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got a minor which looks like this and sounds like this then we have our f chord which is our first barre chord that looks like this and sounds like this then we have our key change at the end so that'll bring us our d chord which looks like this and sounds like this then our a chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then our last chord is our b minor chord which is also our second uh bar chord looks like this and sounds like this and those are the only chords you need to know to play this song alright guys so after you have those chords memorized you do want to go ahead and pause the video and make sure that you can transition pretty smoothly between all of them because this song does kind of move a little bit quickly especially if you're going to be doing some of those picking patterns so just make sure that you're comfortable with those transitions but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into some of the strumming patterns that i want to show you for this song so if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials you will know that the first thing i always suggest especially if you're new to guitar or having trouble with singing and playing at the same time is to do a practice pattern of just one down strum on the beat for every chord change this is really great for you to kind of ease into the song and make sure that you know which words you're going to be switching chords on and things like that so let me go ahead and show you an example of what i mean with this pattern so our song starts on a c chord and all you want to do is strum down once then you go to your next chord which is g then we have a minor then you go to f and you basically just want to do this for the entire song and just sing through it with just that one simple down strum and make sure you know which chord you're going to be switching on but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the first real strumming pattern that i want to show you guys for this song so the first pattern i want to show you guys is pretty simple as you can see it's just eight down strums and so this is going to really help us keep that rhythm during this song and all of the underlined beats i have here are going to be the beats that we kind of stress okay so we've got one two three four five six seven eight so that is the rhythm and now what you want to do once you kind of internalize that rhythm and have those beats that you're stressing you want to go ahead and put the chords with it so again we're starting at the beginning with our c chord and what you want to do is strum this down eight times with that same stressed bead okay so we've got one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight all right awesome so that is the kind of beat that i like to use if you're doing strumming it's very similar to the song because you kind of want to keep that like beat going during this song all we want to do now is kind of speed it up a little bit and then we're going to add in the chord transitions as well so what you want to do with this pattern is play it through two times for each chord so we're essentially going to be doing 16 downs on each chord so let's go ahead and do this on c we've got one two three four five six seven eight again two three four five six seven eight nice then you switch your next chord which is our g chord same thing one two three four five six seven eight again two three four five six seven eight then we have a minor same thing again one two three four five six seven eight twice then you go to your f chord and then same thing again one two three four five six seven eight twice g twice a minor now if you are familiar with palm muting i would go ahead and suggest to palm mute this strumming pattern and what i'm doing there is i'm basically just really lightly resting the side of my strumming hand against the strings between the sound hole and the bridge just really lightly and so whenever you strum it's a little bit more muted alright and i do think that that kind of drives the rhythm a little bit more however this is totally optional if you're not comfortable with palm muting or that's not something you want to put in here you can let this whole pattern ring and that sounds fine as well so once you have the rhythm down and you've got those core transitions in there now all you want to do is speed the whole thing up so that we're at tempo so let me go ahead and play it for you a little bit so you can hear what it sounds like one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight all right so we're going a little bit faster than we just did so let's go ahead and do that again i want you guys to play along with me we're gonna put the chord transitions in we're gonna emphasize those down strums and we're gonna play it at tempo and i'm gonna do a palm mute so go ahead and join me with that if you'd like to one two ready go c twice g twice a minor twice f twice you got it we were saw both i closed my eyes and the flashback starts i'm standing there all right so great job that is the first strumming pattern and you totally can use that for the entire song if that's where you're comfortable however i do have another variation of strumming that you can also include in there this is really good for kind of giving the guitar part a little bit more interest with different strumming patterns so let's go ahead and go through strumming pattern two so the second strumming pattern i have to show you guys is a very common strumming pattern for a lot of songs but especially taylor swift songs as you can see it's down down up up down up and it's going to sound a little something like this all right so you can hopefully hear the rhythm there let's go ahead and put some chords with this so you can put that together so i have my c chord on again because that's the first chord in the song we're just gonna go down down up up down up one two ready go down down up up down up down down up up down down all right awesome now if that was a little bit difficult for you just go ahead and pause the video and practice it a little bit slower however if that was good for you then let's go ahead and move on to the next step which would be to add in those chord transitions okay so i have that up here on screen for you guys what we're going to do again just like the first strumming pattern is we're going to play this pattern through two times for each chord all right so starting on our c chord we're gonna play this through twice down up up down up twice then move to your next chord which is g and then do the same thing down down up up down up twice all right then we've got our a minor chord down down up down up twice and then lastly we have f down down up up down up twice all right and we are actually going near tempo right now so if you could keep up with me just then then that's great you are totally ready to you know incorporate this stirring pattern into your cover try this with me all right i'll count us in one two three four see f twice so you can see with that second strumming pattern i am not doing a palm mute i actually think that this sounds a lot better when you just let the whole thing ring and just like with the first strumming pattern if this is what you're comfortable with and it comes a little bit more naturally to you then strumming pattern one you could totally play this through the entire song and i think it sounds great however i like to actually mix and match my strumming patterns along with some picking patterns for this song so uh let's go ahead and jump into what i have to show you for picking all right guys so i've zoomed in so we can go ahead and take a closer look at this picking pattern and before we start i do just want to point out that in my tutorials i do like to refer to these strings um as numbers in my head it just makes more sense so i hope that it you know makes more sense for you guys as well but you can see here my low e string is six and it goes five four three two one all the way to my high e string so e a d g b e so i'll go ahead and put that on screen so you can see that and just know that for this picking portion i will be you know referring to these strings as numbers but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into some of these picking patterns that i wanted to show you the very first one is probably the easiest ones if you're brand new to picking i would go ahead and recommend that you start with this one and so basically what we're going to do is for each of these chords we're only going to pick the strings individually instead of strumming them and basically what you want to do is your first second and third finger or your pointer middle and ring finger you want to keep these on the top or i guess bottom three strings this whole time for this picking pattern so three two and one so you wanna keep those on there for all of these um these chords um but your thumb is going to switch back and forth between fourth fifth and sixth string based on the bass note of the chord that we're playing so for example with our c chord our bass note or bottom string that we play is fifth so you want to keep your thumb on the fifth but your first second and third are gonna be on three two one so we've got five three two one all right and so the whole picking pattern is basically just playing these strings one at a time from bottom to top so for c we've got five three two one all right and the rest of these chords are going to follow that same pattern so the next chord is our g chord and here you're just gonna move your thumb from the fifth to the sixth string but the actual pattern is the same so we've got six three two one again g is six three two one then we have our a minor chord for that your thumb's gonna go back to the fifth string five three two one and then for f we've got six three two one all right so if you want to do picking for you know just the portions that i like to do those are the only chords you need to know however if you want to do a picking pattern for the entire song i'll go ahead and show you the other chords as well so for d chord we've got four three two one for a we have five three two one and for b minor we have five three two one all right however if you are following the you know version that i like to play i only do the picking pattern kind of towards the beginning so in that case you only need to know the picking pattern for c g a minor and f so anyways um that's the whole picking pattern now what you want to do is play through that twice for each chord so for c we've got five three two one twice then you go to g twice then we have a minor twice then we've got f twice all right and so if you want to put this in context with the song you do need to go a little bit faster not by much but let me go ahead and show you what this sounds like in the song so you can kind of get an idea of that we were both young when i first saw you i closed my eyes and the flashback starts i'm standing all right so that's kind of what the picking pattern sounds like in context of the song and again like with the strumming you can play this picking pattern for the whole song and i think it sounds really pretty however if that is a little bit more simple for you and you want something a little more complicated i do want to show you the second picking pattern alright so jumping into the second picking pattern it's very similar to the first one but we're going to play a few more strings okay so again with your right hand like your picking hand that's going to be the same your thumb's always going to switch back and forth between the sixth fifth and fourth string because it's going to cover the base note but your first second and third finger or your pointer middle and ring are still going to stay on these top three strings okay so that's not going to change from the first picking pattern what's going to change is the order that we're picking these in okay so let's start with our c chord since that's the first chord in the song what you want to do is do 5 3 2 but this time instead of going to that high e string i want you to go back to the third string and then the high e string and then three two three all right that's a little confusing so let me play that without stopping five three two three one three two three all right that's the whole pattern so let's do that again so hopefully you can hear a little bit of that back and forth that we're trying to get going five three two three one three two three five three two three one three two three all right so it's a little more complicated than picking pattern one however it's one of those things where as soon as you get the feel for it it gets a little bit easier let's go ahead and just review what the other chords would be like so our next chord is our g chord and again you're going to move your thumb from the fifth to the sixth string but the rest of the picking pattern is the same okay so we've got six three two three one three two three all right from there let's do a minor your thumb's going to move back to the fifth string because that's our bass note and the pattern is the same five three two three one three two three all right and then for your f chord you're gonna move your thumb back to the sixth string again but again the rest of the pattern is the same six three two three one three two three all right so if you take a look at these four cords you can see the majority of the picking pattern is the exact same for all of these cords the only thing that you're moving throughout this picking is where your thumb is for the bass note all right so uh let's go ahead and put all of those together without stopping and we're going to play this pattern through two times for each chord so for c we've got five three two three one three two three again then we move to g six three two three one three two three twice then we've got a minor five three two three one three two three twice and then f 6 3 2 3 1 3 2 3 twice awesome so again um this picking pattern does take a little bit of time getting used to if you're new to picking however once you get used to it you'll notice that most of the picking is the same and a lot of it is being done by these three fingers and then remember just to move your thumb to the base note depending on what chord you're playing so again let me go ahead and speed this up a little bit and show you what it sounds like in context with the song so you can kind of hear that we were both young when i first saw you i closed my eyes and the flashback starts i'm that's kind of what it sounds like when you put it in context of the song and just like with the first picking pattern i do like to only do the picking in the you know first part of my cover the beginning of the song however if you did feel like you wanted to do picking for the whole song let's go ahead and go through the other three chords that you'll need to know so the d chord would be four three two three one three two three all right so notice that pattern's not changing only the thumb is then for a you would just have the fifth string as your bass note all right and then b minor it's also the fifth note is the bass all right but again just remember that d a and b minor chord um i usually strum those so if you don't want to learn baking you don't have to but if you did want to learn it that's how you would play it but anyways that is the second picking pattern which i think is the slightly more difficult one but i think it sounds a lot more full and kind of really pretty and i will show you guys at the cover in the end how i would use all of these strumming and picking patterns together however there is one last picking pattern i wanted to show you and this is actually the most accurate sounding to the you know original song and i looked everywhere online for this and i couldn't really find a good tab for it so this is just what i came up with so hopefully it sounds accurate to you but i will go ahead and show you how i'm playing that in case you guys are interested all right so for this last picking pattern which like i said is the most accurate sounding you have to know a few kind of different chords on your left hand um as well as we're going to be doing a lot of like flicking motions and hammering motions with our pinky so if that's something that you're struggling with definitely work your way up to this um it does require a lot of like finger strength from your pinky so just giving you a fair warning but basically what we want to do is put our c chord on and what you're going to do with your pinky is you're going to want to put that on the third fret of your b string okay and so your chord will sound like this and that doesn't sound super good but that's because our pinky is going to be doing a lot of this kind of like flicking off action and basically on your c chord the reason why you want to keep your first finger down as well is because we're going to be flicking our pinky off and so you'll need that first finger down to have that note so basically we're gonna go four three two and notice when your pinky's on there you've got this note and then after you pick that note with your pinky on it you want to just flick your pinky off and it should make a little bit of a sound with your first finger so basically look at my right hand i'm not playing anything with your left hand alone you should be able to flick like hammer on your pinky and flick it off and you should be able to hear a tone by just doing that so if you're not hearing a tone it's probably because you don't have enough finger strength in your left hand yet no worries that's just something that takes a little bit of practice so again just work really slowly your way through this so anyways with our c chord again that's four three pinky on and then flick off all right hey everyone it's editing me here i just realized i taught this section a little bit off just at the end of the picking pattern so for the most accurate sounding picking pattern make sure to follow the visuals i have on screen instead of what i'm actually playing there's a slight difference but i do play it the right way at the end during the cover so sorry and thanks for understanding and then after you do that you just want to play the b string again or the second string again with your pinky on and then flick it off again and then one more time so notice with my picking hand my right hand all i'm doing is picking that string once and then letting the flick off make the second note all right so we've got we're doing it three times all right from there we're going to go into our next chord which is a g chord but when you're doing this little picking pattern what i want you to do is just go ahead and take off all your fingers except for your first i'm sorry about it's really hot in here so sorry about the sweat but anyways um you want to take everything off but your first finger and we're gonna go back and forth between our pinky and our first finger just like in the first chord okay but this time when you do four three two see if you don't have any fingers on it makes that different sounds okay so we're going from our c chord to no hands on no fingers on all right and the rest of this is gonna follow the same pattern so you've got four three flick off hammer on flick off hammer on flick off all right so going from c to g we've got this take all your fingers off all right good moving on we've got our a minor chord and that's just going to be played like a regular a minor chord except again you want to keep your pinky on this third fret of the b string and the fingers that you're playing with your right hand are the same so there's still four three two okay but again we're going to do that flick off hammer on motion all right so watch my right hand pretty closely you're only going to be picking that once and then doing that flick off motion all right and then the last chord you would need to know would be that f chord but if you're doing this picking pattern instead of doing the barred version of f i actually want you to play an f major seven okay so that looks like this very similar to our c chord um and then this is how we're going to play it again with your right hand you're staying on those same strings four three two again remember my pinky is always going to start out you know press down on the third fret of the b string and then we're gonna flick it off so let's go ahead and go through this whole thing we've got our c cord on and then you're doing that twice all right then you take off all your fingers for g do the same thing on your right hand twice all right then you go to your a minor chord same thing on your right hand and make sure that pinky is down flick off hammer on flick off hammer on all right twice and then the last chord is your f which we're gonna play in f major seven make sure that pinky's down four three two flick off hammer on flick off hammer on flick off twice all right so let's put that whole thing together i know that this is a little bit tricky so make sure to pause the video and practice at your own tempo and you know as slowly as you need to just remember when you're playing this your right hand is not changing your right hand is playing the same thing the whole time the only thing that's changing are the chords you're playing with your left hand so again with our c chord make sure your pinky's down to start all right and again as with all the other picking and strumming patterns that i showed you you can play this for the entire song however i personally find this rhythm and stuff a little bit hard to play and sing to so when i do my cover i kind of like to mix everything together i like to use all the picking patterns all the strumming patterns for my cover so if you want to follow mine through the way i am doing it i will have all of that listed on screen for you but with that being said let's go ahead and jump in and put everything we learned together to play through the whole song alright guys so once you have those chords memorized you can transition between them you've practiced those strumming patterns as well as picking patterns or whichever ones you feel like doing let's go ahead and put all of that together so we can play through the whole song this is love story by taylor swift taylor's version good luck we were both young when i first saw you i closed see the light see you make your way through the crowd and say hello little did i know and my daddy said stay away from juliet and i was crying on a staircase begging you please so i sneak out to the garden to see you we keep quiet but you were everything and me i was begging you please oh my faith in you was fading when i met you on the outskirts of town and i said romeo save me i've been feeling so alone i keep waiting for you but baby just say yes all right guys and that was my tutorial for how to play love story by taylor swift taylor's version on the guitar thank you so much for watching if you found this helpful make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on any other new tutorials 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 coming up as well as polls and giveaways so make sure to follow me on there and another big thank you to black mountain picks for sponsoring this video lastly i wanted to give a big thank you to all of my patrons on my patreon page i will list their names down below thank you guys so much for making this tutorial possible and keeping these tutorials free for everyone else online um i think that does it for me today so thank you again so much for watching i hope this helped and i will see you in my next video bye don't you