Memories by Maroon 5 Tutorial/Lesson
Memories
G, D, Em, Bm, C
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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 memories by maroon 5 on the guitar this is my very first patron picks which is my tutorial that i let my patrons on patreon vote for every single month and for the month of february they voted for memories by maroon 5 which is why i am doing this full-length tutorial for you guys so if you want some voting power in the songs that you'd like to see me do on my channel make sure to check out my patreon which will be linked below and guys before we jump into the tutorial i did want to give a huge thank you to today's sponsor black mountain picks 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 we've been through so first things first i am using an electric in this video however you can follow this through exactly the same way with an acoustic guitar and it'll work exactly the same but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into how to play this song so i have my guitar in standard tuning and i also have a capo on the fourth fret that just makes the chords and everything a little bit easier to play on top of that you only need to know five chords to play through this whole song we do have a bar chord in there which is that b minor chord so this is a great one to practice bar chords with and i also have one strumming pattern and one picking pattern to show you guys to play through this so let's go ahead and jump into what those chords look like i'll carry these torches alright guys so i've zoomed in so we can take a closer look at these chords like i said you only need to know five to play through the whole song and the first one is g which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got our d chord which looks like this and sounds like this then we have our e minor which looks like this and sounds like this then we have our bar chord which is our b minor chord that looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is c which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the only chords you need to know to play this song all right guys so once you have those chords memorized make sure to take a few minutes to practice transitioning between them the beautiful thing about this song is that this chord progression is the exact progression for the entire song so once you can transition between the chords in this order you should be good for the rest of it um but with that being said once you have those transitions down let's go ahead and jump into some strumming patterns that i'd like to show you for this song so if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials you'll know that the very first strumming pattern is kind of a practice pattern i always suggest beginners start out like this or people who are having trouble singing and playing guitar at the same time so what you want to do is just do one single down strum on the beat for every chord change throughout the entire song and just kind of practice that to make sure that you know where those chord changes are going to be so let me just walk you through one little chorus to see how this works um i've got my g chord on because that's the very first chord in the song and all you want to do is strum it down once switch your next chord d e minor b minor then we've got c back to g back to c and on d all right and like i said earlier the entire song follows this progression so as long as you can do those chords in that progression order then you should be good but let's go ahead and put some singing with it just so you can see how i want you to practice this one two ready go here's to the ones that we got cheers to the wish you were here but you're not cause the drinks bring back all the memories of everything we've been through toes to the ones here today toes to the ones that we lost on the way cause the drinks bring back all the memories and the memories bring back memories bring back you all right and so basically i only want you to do this if you're very new to guitar or you're having trouble singing and playing at the same time it's really useful to be able to know what word you're singing whenever you're doing those transitions and things like that but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the actual strumming pattern that i like to use for this song so as you can see the actual strumming pattern i would suggest using for this song is kind of a long one it can be a little intimidating you can see it's down up up down up up down down up and it does sound a little something like this down up up down up up down down up now don't let the length of this strumming pattern intimidate you at all we are going to break it down a little bit to make it a little bit easier to digest so let's break that rhythm down a little bit i'm going to count out the beads and i want you to jump in whenever you feel comfortable okay so i've got my g chord on we're just gonna stay on g chord to get the rhythm down one two one two ready go down up up down down up down up up down up up down down up all right great if you found that a little hard to keep up with me no worries just make sure to go a little bit slower practice a little bit slower until you can build up your tempo until you can get it at tempo which is what we were just doing but now the other thing i wanted to show you about this strumming pattern is this strumming pattern is not going to change throughout the song but what we're going to do is we're going to switch our chords in the middle of the strumming pattern okay so after the first little triplet down up we're going to switch chords and then carry out the rest of the strumming pattern with our second chord so let me go ahead and show you an example of this if we're going from our g to our d chord because those are the first two chords in the song we would do g on the first triplet down up up then you'd switch to d and finish out the rest of the pattern down up up down down up all right so without stopping we've got do you hear that down up up down down up g d all right so once you get used to switching those chords in the middle of the pattern the rest of the song is going to finish or is going to follow that exact same pattern so we've got g to d down up up down up down down up our next two chords are e minor and b minor and they follow the exact same progression down up up down up up down down up then we've got c to g down up up down down up then c to d down up up down all right so that's the whole strumming pattern you can use it for the entire song so let me go ahead and show you once without stopping how we would make those chord transitions in the middle of the pattern we've got g d e minor b minor c g c d again here's to the ones that we got cheers all right great so i know that this pattern can be a little bit um challenging for some people especially if you're new to strumming or new to the guitar so make sure to pause the video and practice at your own tempo until you can get those chord transitions in the middle and get it up to speed and everything but like i said you can use the strumming pattern for the entire song however if you are familiar with the song there's more of a kind of like picking line that you would hear towards the beginning and kind of all throughout the song so let's go ahead and jump into what i would do for picking back all the memories and the memories bring back memories bring back you all right guys so i've zoomed in so we can take a closer look at this picking pattern and before we begin i do just want to point out that i actually like to number my strings it just makes more sense in my head so i hope it does in yours as well so you can see here my low e is six and it goes five four three two one all the way to my high e which is that one okay so for this picking pattern i will be referring to the strings as numbers just so you know but with that being said let's go ahead and take a look at how to play this picking pattern so basically what you want to do is you want to take your thumb and keep that on the bottom three strings the bass strings okay e a and d six five and four then you wanna take your pointer finger and put that on the third g string your middle finger is gonna go on your second b string and your ring finger is gonna go on your top e string your high e string okay and throughout this picking pattern these three fingers are never going to move from these three strings the only finger you're going to move is your thumb because your thumb is going to be covering the bass note so your thumb's going to go back and forth between six five and four based on the chord that you're playing so if we look at our g chord the bass note in that is your sixth okay so for your g string we're gonna have six three two one those are the fingering numbers okay and what you wanna do is you wanna just go six three and then you're gonna pick two and one at the same time all right so we've got six three two one all right and that's how we do that then for the next chord which is our d chord you're going to move your thumb over to the fourth string since that's the bass note of the d chord and this time what you want to do is pick your thumb by itself then you want to pick all three of your other fingers at the same time okay so for d we've got four three two one all at once so notice how that's a little bit different than the g chord g chord we've got six and three individually and then two one together then on d we've got four by itself and then three two one all together and that pattern is going to apply for the rest of these chords as well so we've got g then we've got d then we've got e minor that's gonna be played like g we've got six three two one then we have b minor and that's going to be played like the d except our fifth um string is gonna be on our thumb okay so we're gonna play five then three two one all together right so e minor six three two one b minor five three two one okay we're halfway there let's go ahead and go to our c chord on your c chord your thumb is going to stay on the fifth string and we're going to play this like the g and e minor five three two and one together okay then go to your g chord and we're on six three two one and we're gonna play six by itself then three two one together so c is then g then you go back to c and that's played the same way again five three two one then go to d four and then pick all three three two one so the whole thing is like this all right so if you notice the pattern we're going back and forth between two individual picks and then two together versus one individual pick and then three together so let's do that one more time on my g we've got six three two one d four three two one e minor six three two one b minor five three two one c five three two one g six three two one back to c five three two one to d four three two one all right and then the last thing you wanna do for this little picking pattern is after every other chord you wanna kind of mute the strings so on the d b minor g and d chords you want to kind of slap the strings to mute them after you play them so we've got g to d and then mute okay so that's that whole rhythm there and you want to do that for the rest of them as well so we've got e minor to b minor and then we've got a mute there c g mute c d mute all right so let's do that whole thing all right and that picking pattern the beautiful thing is that you can apply that for the entire song it repeats itself over and over and over again for the whole song so if you want to do picking for the whole song you totally could here's to the ones that we got cheers to the wish you were here but you're not cause the drinks bring back all the memories of everything we've been through all right so that's just a little preview but the whole the painting pattern works for the whole song i have tried it it sounds great so with that being said let's go ahead and put everything together so we can do the playthrough please bring back memories bring back memories bring back you all right guys so once you have those cores memorized you've practiced transitioning between them you've done those strumming patterns and that picking pattern if you wanted to let's go ahead and put all of that together so we can play through the whole song of memories by maroon 5. good luck here's to the ones that we got cheers to the wish you were here but you're not cause the drinks bring back all the memories of everything we've been through toes to the ones here today toast to the ones that we lost on the way cause the drinks bring back all the memories and the memories bring back memories bring back you there's a time that i remember when i did not know no pain when i believed in forever and everything would stay the same now my heart feel like december when somebody say your name cause i can't reach out to call you but here's to the ones that we got cheers to the wish you were here but you're not cause the drinks bring back all the memories of everything we've been through toes to the ones here today toes to the ones that we've lost on the way cause the drinks bring back all the memories and the memories bring back memories bring back you do do do do do do do do do do do do do memories bring back memories bring back you there's a time that i remember when i never felt so lost when i felt all of the hatred was too powerful everybody cause the drinks bring back all the memories of everything we've been through toast to the ones here today toes to the ones that we've lost all the way bring cuz memories yeah yeah memories bring back memories bring back you all right guys so that was my tutorial for how to play memories by maroon 5 on the guitar if this helped you 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 new tutorials if you're feeling extra generous make sure to leave a comment down below as well because that does help the engagement on my videos to help get these free tutorials out to more people 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 i'll pull you guys on things you want to see and this is also where i do giveaways every now and then so make sure to follow me on there if you would like to and then another huge thank you to black mountain picks for sponsoring this video as well as all of my patrons on patreon i have all of their names listed right now on screen these are the people who voted on memories as my very first ever patron picks tutorials so if you want voting power in the next month's patron picks make sure to check out my patreon link down below alright but thank you guys so much again for watching i hope this helped and i will see you in my next tutorial bye memories bring back memories you