Video transcript
Hey everyone, my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Lion Eyes by Eagles on the guitar. And today I am featuring my Orangewood Brooklyn guitar. So if you like what you see, I'll link more information about it down below. I also want to give a quick shout out and thank you to my patrons over on my Patreon page for voting on this song as this month's patron pick. So if you want a little bit of voting power in the songs you see me teach here on this channel, make sure to check it out. I [music] will link it down below. Here's a quick overview of everything I'll be covering in this tutorial today and with that being said, let's go ahead and get started. All right guys, so you are going to need to know 11 different chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our G major which looks like this and sounds like this. >> [music] >> 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 my free beginner series right here on YouTube. So make sure to check that out right here. The next chord shape is our G major 7 and the way I like to play this is I'll just take my regular G chord shape and I'll scoot my ring finger down a fret and that's how I like to play G major 7. >> [music] >> However, I know this can be a pretty uncomfortable stretch if you have bigger hands. So another way you can fret this chord is like this. >> [music] >> I personally find this way a little bit harder. So um pick whichever one you feel more comfortable with. The next chord shape is our C major. >> [music] >> We also have our A minor. There's our D7. >> [music] >> Next is our D over F sharp. Then there's our E minor. >> [music] >> We also have our B minor. Then there's our F major. >> [music] >> Our A seven. >> [music] >> And finally our A minor seven. >> [music] >> And those are the only chords you need to know to play through this song. So go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as need to really look over all of these chord shapes, get them memorized, and also practice transitioning back and forth between them cuz it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you. And if this is skill you're currently struggling with, I do have a practice with me chord transitions playlist right here on my YouTube channel. So I'll link that in the corner for those of you who need it. But once you're comfortable with these chords, we can go ahead and talk about these strumming that I would suggest for this song. Right, so as I always say, if you are brand new to playing guitar or you're somebody who's struggling 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 go through the entire thing with just a single down strum on each chord change as you sing through the song. You want to take this time to really get used to what word or what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing. So here's a quick example of what that would look like. City [music and singing] girls just seem to find out early how to open [singing] doors with just a smile. >> [music] >> All right, so that's just a really quick example, but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song and just really make sure you know where those chords are going to be changing. And this is 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 box if you're interested. But once you've done that and you're comfortable with these chord changes, then we can go ahead and add to this to create more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song. All right guys, so in an effort to keep this as beginner-friendly as possible, we do have quite a few chords [music] to play through this song, so let's keep the strumming pretty simple. As you can see, we're going to be counting this in an eighth note rhythm, so it's going to sound like this. We have one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down down up up down up down up up down. All right, super simple. You might recognize this strumming pattern. This is a rhythm that you can use to play so many different songs and it works really well with this one as well. What we're going to do is we're going to play this pattern through one time or two times per chord throughout the song. So, if you're looking at the guide that's on my Patreon page, I will mark all of the chords that we're going to play for two measures, in which case you repeat this pattern twice. Otherwise, all of the unmarked chords we're just going to play through it once. So, let's go ahead and take a look at that first verse as an example. We're starting here on our G major chord. What you're going to do is play through the G major on this pattern one time, so we've got down down up up down up. Next chord is your G major 7, down down up [singing and music] up down up. Then we've got our C major and you can see here on my guide I've got the little x2. That means we're playing it for two measures. So, you're going to go down [singing and music] down up up down up twice. >> [music] >> All right. And basically, you can use this strumming pattern to play through the entire song. Now, this song does go a little bit quicker, so you do want to be able to build up the speed of playing this pattern. So, more at full tempo it'll sound like this. We've got down up up [music] down up [singing] down down up up down up. 1 2 3 [music] 4 1 2 and [singing] and 4 and All right, [music] so that's kind of more at full tempo. It might even go just a little bit faster than that. So, if you are already struggling with keeping up with me or you're getting confused on, you know, which strums are down, which are up, your coordination's kind of like going all over the place, that just means that you need to slow down and build up some muscle memory. So, it's something you want to do slowly with a metronome over time. And I actually do have a strumming pattern practice with me series here on my YouTube channel as well. And we do cover this exact strumming pattern where we build it up in real time together. So, I'll link that in the corner here for those of you who need it. Um but once you have this pattern kind of more under your muscle memory and you can play through it without counting it, more at full tempo with some singing would sound like this. We've got one and two and three and four and G >> [music] >> G7 C twice A minor twice G7 All right, that's the [music] verse six. City [singing] girls just seem to find out a way how to open doors >> [music] >> with just a smile. >> [music] >> All right. The verse six all follow like that. I do have a few chords here throughout this tutorial where they're going to have this little dash mark. And basically what that means is that's my way of showing you guys that we are going to be splitting the measure. So, for any of these chords that have a little dash next to them, we are going to have to change the strumming pattern a little. So, now instead of playing the full measure, what we're going to do is we're going to put a little vertical line here in the middle. That represents where I want you to change chords within a measure, okay? And then we're going to take the first half of this pattern, the down down up, we're going to repeat it for the latter half of this pattern, okay? So, now for the split measure pattern, we're going to go down down up So, throughout this song in some of the verses, as well as in the choruses, you'll notice these little dashed marks. So, just remember, when you see these dashes, we are splitting the measure, so you want to do this pattern. And then, these little asterisks or stars, that's just, again, my way of suggesting to you guys that we're going to do a single down strum. Um you don't have to do that, but I feel think it kind of like matches the song if you just do a single down strum there. So, in the chorus, we would have a G, single [music] down strum, to C, >> [singing] >> single down strum, into a full measure G, >> [music] >> down, down, up, up, down, up. Then, in the next line, you can see here we've got our dashes, so we're going to go G, [music] down, up, [singing] split your measure into D over F sharp, down, [music] down, up, to E minor for a full measure, okay? >> [music] >> So, let's go ahead and string that together for the chorus. We've got G, two, [music and singing] three, four, C, two, three, four, G. split, D over F sharp, E minor. >> [music] >> These are all full measures, [singing] A minor. D seven, okay? And that's the chorus there. You can't hide your >> [singing] >> lying eyes. And your smile [singing] >> [music] >> is a faded sky. I thought >> [singing] >> by now >> [music] >> We've got our F chord. You'd really know. A seven. >> [music] >> Ain't no way to hide your lying eyes. And that goes straight into the breaks. And the break is going to look just like our intro chord progression. So, basically, you can use this strumming pattern to play through the entire song. Just keep an eye out for any of those dashed [music] chords, we're going to do that split pattern. And also, just keep an eye out for those asterisks and play a single down strum if you want to follow the way I'm going to do this in my cover. All right, guys. So again, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as need to really look over this strumming rhythm and get it internalized. This is one that's super common. You'll see that you can use it for so many different songs. So I really encourage you to take the time to get this [music] under your muscle memory. Once you can play it without counting it anymore, you'll be able to sing on top of it. So again, check out my practice with me series if you need help with that. But once you've got this strumming rhythm under your belt, we can go ahead and put everything we've learned in this tutorial together today to play through the song. 1 2 ready go. [music] >> [music] [singing and music] >> Want to have fun jamming out to 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 [music] and play along guitar tutorials. I'll make sure to leave a link for it in the description box down below. If you enjoyed learning this song [music] 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 [music and singing] and easy to play. So I'll see you over there. Bye.