Midnight Sun by Zara Larsson Tutorial/Lesson
Midnight Sun
Dsus2, Am7, C, Gadd4
Download Printable Guitar Guide
Unlock with Patreon
Watch play along cover
Unlock with Patreon
Are you new to playing the guitar? Watch my free Beginner Series where I show you all of the basics. You'll be playing your first songs in minutes!
Video transcript
Hey everyone, my name is Ellen and I make guitar tutorials for all your favorite songs right here on my YouTube channel. And today I wanted to show you guys how to play Midnight Sun by Zara Larson on the guitar. So let's go ahead and jump into it. All right, guys. So first, let's go ahead and go over the four chord shapes you need to know to play this song. Take a notice that my capo is here on the second fret, and that'll give us the easiest chord shapes. We've got our Dsus 2, our A minor 7, our C major, and last is our G add 4. And take a notice really quick also how easy these chord transitions are because we're going to start with our Dsus 2 with our middle and ring finger. Then you just want to move your middle finger up a string and then place your first finger down for that A minor 7. Then you [music] want to keep both these fingers here and just add your ring for that C major. [music] And then you want to move your ring and your middle finger up a string each to get that G add 4. [music] All right. So if you take the time to practice those chord transitions, learning the rest of this song will be a piece of cake for you. All right. So once you have those chords memorized, go ahead and take a second to practice transitioning back and forth between them. The chord order that I showed you how to play all the chords in is the exact same order we're going to stick to for the entire song. So just make sure you can transition between your Dsus 2, your A minor 7 [music] to your C to your G add 4. Once you can do that comfortably, we just have to add some strumming to finish up the song. Now, if you're not brand new to playing guitar, I would definitely recommend experimenting with strumming because, like I always say, the strumming pattern that you come up with most naturally is what will help you be able to sing on top of that strumming later. However, if you do need a little bit more guidance on strumming that you can use, I have two suggestions. The first one is this. Down, down, up, up, down, up. It's going to sound like this. We've got down, down, up, up, down, up, All right. This is a super common pattern and it's super beginner friendly as well. You'll see that you can use it to play through so many songs and it sounds great with this one as well. What we're going to do is play through it two times per chord throughout the entire song. So, we've got our Dsus 2 on. You're going to play this pattern twice. Down up down [music and singing] up twice to your A minor 7. Down [singing] up down up down up down up [music] to C. to G add four. And essentially you would just repeat that over and over again from the beginning to the end of the song. So let's go ahead and speed it up just a little and add some singing so you can hear how it all comes together. So more at full tempo it'll sound like this. We've got 1 2 ready go. Down, down, up, down, up twice. A minor [music and singing] 7 twice to C to G. You got it. [music] Skinny D with your heart out. It's my favorite part. [singing and music] Now we ain't got to tell no one. I never ending my song. never ending [music] song. All right, so over and over again for the entire song start to finish. My second suggestion for strumming is all downstrums. You can see there's eight downstrums here. And the way we count this is with an eighth note strumming pattern. So it's just going to sound like this. We've got 1 and 2 and 3 and four and down down down down. Okay. Also another super simple beginner friendly pattern. What you're going to do is again play this pattern through two times per chord. So we've got Dsus 2 1 and 2 and [singing and music] 3 and 4 and A minor 7 to C all downrs to G. All right. But if you don't like the way that that sounds a little bit muddy, two things you can do if you want to dress it up a little bit is the first thing is I would add some accents in here. So I'm going to go ahead and label them. The first beat, the end of the two and the four. I would go ahead and give those strums just a little bit extra emphasis. So we've got 1 and [music] 2 and 3 and four and. Okay. all the way through a minor 7 [music] also with our C [music] and our G. So hopefully you can hear how those accented strums are just a little louder, a little more punchy than the surrounding strums. And the second thing you can do to dress this up is you can also add a palm mute. So I'm taking the side of my strumming hand. I'm laying that on my strings really close to the bridge of my guitar. And if you gently lay them there as you strum and keep those accents in, it'll sound like this. We've got 1 and 2 and 3 and [singing and music] four and. Okay. So, you can hear how it kind of just mutes the strings a little bit, dampens [music] them, and lets the vocals stand out a little bit more. So, those are two optional things, the accents and the palm muting. But, if you can add it into this all downstrum pattern, it sounds really great for the song as well. So, let's go ahead and put all of that together. or speed it up just a little bit so you can hear how it comes together. So at full tempo it'll sound like this. We've got 1 2 ready go. D two measures [music] a minor 7 down down [singing] down down. It's pretty fast. Okay, we've got our accents and our palm [music] mutes going. Skinny dipping with your heart out. It's my favorite [singing] part. Now we ain't got to tell no one. a neverending [singing] midnight sun. Okay, so that's just a quick example of the choruses there. But again, you could apply either of these strumming patterns to the entire song, start to finish, and I think it sounds so good. My suggestion with the two strumming patterns I showed today would be maybe to do the all downstrum pattern for the verses and then let the choruses ring out with that down up down up pattern. If you want to jam with me for the entire song start to finish [music] and see exactly what I would suggest doing in my cover, you can check out my full playalong tutorial available on my Patreon page right now. And over there, I also have a printable guide that has everything I've taught in this tutorial explained more thoroughly, as well as the chords and lyrics and everything available over there. So, if you're interested, check that out. Otherwise, thank you so much for watching. I hope this helped, and I will see you in another video coming out soon. Bye. [music]