Old Phone by Ed Sheeran Tutorial/Lesson
Old Phone
G, D, Cadd9, Em, Dsus4
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Video transcript
Hi, my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Old Phone by Ed Sheeran on the guitar. Now, this is one of those super beginner friendly songs that you can play with just four chords and one strumming pattern. So, with that being said, let's go ahead and get into the tutorial. All right, guys. So, you only need to know four different chord shapes to play through this entire song. Remember, our capo is here on the third fret to be in the same key as the original song. The first chord is our G major. Next we have our D major. We also have our C add 9. And then last is our E minor. And now one way that I like to play it, I also have a fifth optional chord for you, which is our Dsuspended four. and I'll show you how you can use that later in the tutorial. But if you don't want to learn this chord, you can just use a regular D whenever I mention D suspended four. Um, but those are the only chords you need to know to play through this song. All right, so once you have those chords memorized and you're pretty comfortable with transitioning between them, then we can go ahead and add some strumming to pull this song together. So the strumming that I would suggest for this song, as you can see, is just down, down, up, It's going to be counted in an eighth note rhythm. So it's going to sound like this. We've got 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and four and down up down up down up down up. All right. So before we move on, we want to make sure that we can speed this pattern up quite a bit cuz this song does move pretty fast. So at full tempo it's going to sound like this. We've got down up down up 1 2 and 4 and 1 2 and 4. All right. So, you want to make sure you can play it about that fast before moving on. Um, but once you can kind of get that strumming motion down, what you'll need to know next is the structure of the song. So, depending on whether you're playing the verse or the chorus, we are going to repeat this strumming pattern multiple times. So, in the verse, we're going to go from G to D to C add 9. And each of those chords is going to get this strumming pattern four times. And then to end the phrase, we're going from G to D. And each of those is going to get this strumming pattern twice. Okay? So the verse is going to sound like this. We've got G 1 2 3 4 to D 1 2 3 4 to C add 9 1 2 3 4. And then here we're going to split it in half for each. So we've got G 1 2 to D 3 4. All right. And that's the whole progression for all of the verses. Um, something that you can do if you want to make it sound a little cooler is on that first downstrum, you can pick just the bass string or like the lowest string in each chord. So, for example, G, you want to pick the low E string by itself and then finish the strumming pattern. So, just something extra you can throw in there if you want to. Um, but that's how all of the verses, the chord order, and everything is going to follow. I found my old phone today. The box that I have hidden away trying to lead me. Maybe I All right. And that's all of the verses. Now, when we get to the chorus, the chord order is going to change a little bit there. So for the choruses, we're going from E minor to C9 to G to D. And so for all of these chords, we want to play this pattern four times for each of them. Okay? So we've got E minor down up down twice. 3 4 to C at 9 2 3 4 to G 3 4 to D. All right. And that's how you can play through all of those chorus progressions. Conversations with my dead friends, messages from all my exes. I kind of think that this was in the past where it belongs. All right. Something to mention about the chorus is that the first time you play through the chorus as well as the last time, which kind of also serves as the outro, I would suggest just doing a single downstrum because it's a little bit more acappella there. Conversations with my dead friends. Just a single downstrum on each of these chords. Messages from all my exes. I kind of think that this was best left in the past where it belongs. All right. Right. So if you want to pair it down to a single downstrum, I think that sounds really good for the first chorus and the last chorus. And then one last thing is we had that optional chord that D suspended four. If you want to use that, the best place to use that is the very end of the chorus. We have E minor to C add 9 to G to D. Now on that last D, what you can do is play D suspended four for two measures and then go to D for two measures. Okay? Totally optional, but I do think it sounds a little more accurate to the song. So we'd have E minor 2 3 4 C and 9 2 3 4 G and then we have D suspended 4 2 to D two. All right. Totally optional, but I do think it kind of rounds out the end of the chorus and makes it sound really good. Now, the last little section is that bridge section where we're kind of just singing the oo's and o's. We just hold the exact same chord progression and the exact same strumming pattern as the chorus for that. Um, but that would cover the entire song. So, like I said, this song is pretty easy for beginners. If you are interested in playing through the entire song with me, I do have my playalong version on my Patreon page, as well as a printable guide with the chords and lyrics and everything that you can download and print out. If you're interested in either of those perks, I would definitely check out my Patreon page. I'll link it down below. That ends this tutorial. So, thank you so much for watching and I hope you have fun jamming and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.