My Girl by The Temptations Tutorial/Lesson
My Girl
C, F, Dm, G, Em, A, D
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Video transcript
foreign my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play My Girl by The Temptations on the guitar 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 alright guys so we only have seven chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our C major which looks like this and sounds like this foreign 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 in my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out the next chord is our Bard chord which is f but I know bar chords can sometimes be pretty difficult for beginners so if you are a beginner trying to learn this song you can replace your Bard f with your F over c chord foreign the next chord is our D minor we also have our G major there's our E minor a major and then the last chord you need to know is our D major chords to play through this song so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them because it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier and if this is something that you're currently working on I would suggest checking out my practice with me Series where we go through this skill in real time together but once you've done that we can go ahead and talk a little bit about the strumming so if you are a beginner or somebody who struggles with playing and singing at the same time the first thing I would suggest is to go ahead and bring up the song and play through the whole thing with a single down strum as you sing through the song and just take a few minutes to make a mental note of what word you're singing whatever those chords are changing so for an example let's go ahead and bring up the chorus I guess could say what can make me feel this way my girl all right so basically you would want to do that for the entire song and just take a mental note of wherever those chords are changing um 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 will make sure to leave that link in the description box for you guys but once you've done that we can talk a little bit more about a full strumming pattern alright guys so the first strumming pattern I have for you is a very common down down up up down up so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk a little bit about this Rhythm alright guys so we're in another eighth note rhythm today and basically you're just gonna count it 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 down up down up all right and basically you can use this strumming pattern for almost the entire song so you would want to play this pattern through one time for each chord throughout the verses let's go ahead and look at the first first as an example you can see here we're going back and forth between C and F and all you want to do is play this pattern one time three for each chord so we have C down up up down up to F down down up up down up back to C back to F just like that I've got sunshine and when it's cold outside all right so you can see we're basically just going back and forth between the two chords and doing a full strumming pattern for each once you get to my girl you would basically repeat this pattern two times for that c chord so we have my girl then for your D Minor to your G you would do it one time through again talking about foreign and basically that applies for every chorus and every verse throughout the song you can totally use this strumming pattern the only place that is going to change a little bit is the first half of the chorus because we're actually going to be transitioning these chords a little bit faster so this is where strumming pattern two comes into play alright guys so for strumming pattern two as you can see it's not much more difficult it's just down down up down up so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk a little bit about this Rhythm alright guys so this is still going to be counted in an eighth note Rhythm so basically we have this one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down down up down down up down down up all right and so basically before we go any further I'm going to put a little vertical line here between each down down up and what that's going to represent is where we're going to change chords so like I said in strumming pattern one we are going to be changing chords a little bit more frequent currently in the first half of the chorus so basically on the left side you would do one chord so for example in the chorus our c chord and on the right side you would do your next chord which is like D minor for example and basically you would take this pattern and play it one time through for each of those chord pairings in the first half of the chorus so if none of this is making sense don't worry we'll break it down right now so let's take a look at this chorus on our c chord you would do the first half of the strumming pattern so we have down down up then switch to your D minor and finish it out down down up then we have f and g so F gets the first half down down up and then G gets the finish it out down down up all right so without stopping it sounds like this C D Minor f G all right so hopefully you can hear that chorus coming together feel this way all right and basically that's the only place that I like to use this split pattern just because like I said the cords transition a little quicker there and um yeah that's the second strumming pattern all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really internalize these strumming patterns and get them to the point where you're not really counting it in your head too much anymore and that'll make singing on top of it so much easier um but once you've done that we can actually talk about a cute little solo tab that's really quite easy to play and I wanted to show it to you because it's so iconic so um let's go ahead and talk about the tab hey really quick in addition to the printable guide we've been looking at did you know I also offer customizable backing tracks polls for What songs you want to learn next and even video chats if you're having trouble you can unlock all these perks and more if you become a patron which helps me grow my channel and make more videos just like this one or if patreon's not your thing you can still help me out a lot by giving me a thumbs up and leaving a comment below to help me reach more people in YouTube's recommendations it only takes a second but makes a huge difference so thanks so much and let's get back into it alright guys so let's go ahead and break down this tab um first of all if you don't know how to read what you're seeing at the top of the screen I did make a fun little interactive video on how to read guitar tabs so I would check that out first and then come back and that'll make reading this a lot easier but basically let's look at the first half what you want to do is this is going to basically be like your c chord so your chord shape on your left hand is going to be in that c chord shape and what you want to do is go ahead and pick the a string with your ring finger on the third fret all right then when you get to your D string go ahead and take off your middle finger so you can play that open as it's ringing I want you to hammer down your middle finger and it'll produce that second tone and all you want to do is go next door to the G string and do the exact same thing we're going to pick it open and then Hammer Down on the second fret and we're using our middle finger for all of these hammer-ons okay so we have foreign and then just to finish it out you would pick your first fret on your B string which is where your pointer finger is okay and that's how you would play that first part and then for the second part this is kind of going to go over your F chord but instead of holding down the chord shape on your left hand I would just do this kind of more freehand so go ahead and put your pointer finger on the first fret of your low E string all right then I like to use my ring finger for the third fret of the low E string all right and then this is where it's going to be kind of like the first half we're going to do more hammer-ons so on your a string you're going to pick it open then as it's ringing you're going to hammer on your ring finger onto the third fret of that a string all right so you do kind of have to have a little bit of muscle in your fingers to hammer it on hard enough to produce a tone so just give yourself plenty of time to practice this if this is something that's new to you but once you do that on the a string again you're just going to repeat that on the D string next door so you're going to pick it open and then hammer on with your ring finger on that third fret and then you repeat that whole thing and then basically once you get here you would go back to the beginning of this tab and start all over all right and this repeats itself throughout each of the verses so you could play through this for the verses instead of strumming totally up to you but I just wanted to provide this option in case that's something that you were looking forward to playing alright guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to look over this tab and really get it under your belt it's a fun way to really dress up your cover if you're wanting to play this for someone it's instantly recognizable when you play this tab but anyways once you get back we can put everything we've learned together in this tutorial to play through the song on a cloudy day when it's cold outside I've got the mother made Wanna Have Fun Jimmy 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 and play along guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below if you enjoyed learning this song with me then you should definitely check out this video not only does it have a super similar Vibe but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye