Old Time Rock and Roll by Bob Seger Tutorial/Lesson
Old Time Rock and Roll
E, A, B
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Video transcript
hey everyone it's Ellen here again and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play oldtime rock and roll by Bob Sager on the guitar today I Am featuring my Orange Wood Brooklyn guitar so if you like what you see I will definitely link more information about it down below I want to give a quick shout out and thank you to my patrons on my patreon page for voting on this song as this month's Patron picks so if you want a little bit of voting power in the songs you see me Teach here on my channel make sure to check that out I will link it down below here is 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 only need to know three different chord shapes to play through this entire song and we're going to start with our E major which looks like this and sounds like this 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 a major and then the last chord shape is our B major and just a quick note about these chords is um on the a major you'll notice that I'm using my middle ring and pinky finger a lot of times you'll see an a chord with these three fingers instead with your pointer middle and ring but for this particular song I would recommend Fring it with these three fingers so that your index is kind of free so that it'll be an easy transition from a to your B cuz you're just sliding that shape up so if you're somebody who struggles with bar chords or transitioning to your bar chords that's what I would suggest playing your a like this so it's a little bit easier of a transition um but yeah other than that those are the chords that you need to know for this song all right guys 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 cuz it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier the good news is with just these three chords once you get the transitions between them you can play through the whole song but if that's something that you're currently struggling with and need help with I do have an entire practice with me chord transitions playlist right here on YouTube so I'll link that in the corner for those of you who need it but once these chords are under your belt then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would recommend for this song all right guys so as I always say if you are brand new to playing guitar or you're somebody who struggles with playing guitar while singing at the same time the first thing was just doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and go through the entire thing with just a single down Strom on each chord change as you sing through the song and 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 just take those old records off the shelf I'll sit and listen to them by myself today's music a got the same soul I like that old time of rock and roll all right so that's just a quick example but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song the good news is what we just went through with that chord order it actually follows that way for the entire song So once you learn it like one time for one verse you can apply it for the rest of the song so it makes it a little bit easier but anyways this is 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 um but once you have the single downst under your belt then we can go ahead and add to it to make more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so for strumming for today as you can see we are in an eighth note count and it's going to sound like this we've got one and two and three and four and 1 and two and three and four and down down up up down up down down up up down up all right this is a super popular shamming pattern that you'll see used in a lot of songs and it can apply to this one as well so that's good for us um but basically what we want to do is we're going to play this pattern through two times per chord throughout most of the song um like I said when we did the single down strum the whole song follows the same chord order so let me go ahead and take you through one section of the song and just know that once we go through it you can apply exactly the same way for the rest of the song as well so for example let's take a look at that first verse we're starting on our E chord you would do this pattern twice for E so we have down down up up down up twice then you go to your a chord chord down down up up down up twice next is B down down up up down up twice and then on this last line we're going to go back to e but instead of playing this pattern twice we're just going to play it once and then we're going to go to our B chord and for this B chord anytime you're like ending the phrasing of this song something you can do to kind of like build up to the next part of the song is instead of doing the strumming that's listed you would just go back and forth and strum every beat so we have 1 and 2 and 3 and four and all right so that last line would be e down down up down up to be down up down up down up so every time you come across the B that ends the little phrasing you want to just do you know the down up down up down up and that'll lead nicely into the next section so let's go ahead and go through an entire little round so you can hear what that sounds like on our E chord we have down down up down up twice to a twice to B twice and then here's e is once and then down up down up down up down up back to e okay and that's how you do the whole round just just take those old records off the shelf I'll sit and listen to them by myself today's music ain't got the same soul I like that old time rock and roll don't try to take me to AO all right so that was one little round and like I said this song's super repetitive in that way so you would just keep repeating the guitar part over and over again now one last thing that I did want to show you is towards the end when there's like some instrumental parts and things like that something that you can do is when it gets to that more like um a capella part where it's just like drums instead of playing your chords you can actually keep the same strumming Rhythm but just kind of mute your chords with your left hand uh by like covering the strings all right and so on that last it's like the second to last chorus I think we're just going to do this this strumming pattern but with no chords and then you'll see how that kind of mimics the original song So in that last part you still want to be singing But you just want to kind of do this Rhythm instead so let that old time of rock and roll the kind of music just so the soul I reminisce about the days of old with that old time of rock and roll and then on B you want to go back to playing time of rock and roll all right so that's just an option you don't have to do that but I think if you kind of switch to that kind of more muted chucking strum it does sound really good at the end with the instrumental Parts um but besides that this strimming Rhythm you can apply for the entire song like I said the chord order and structure is exactly the same so once you can play it for one section of the song you can now play the entire song so um yeah that is my suggestion for shamming all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this strumming Rhythm under your belt this is a super popular Shing rhm that you can apply to so many different songs so um the sooner you can kind of get it under your muscle memory the better and I actually do have a practice with me strumming series video here on YouTube as well that covers this exact pattern where we speed it up in real time together so I'll make sure to leave that link in the corner if you need it but once you have this strumming Rhythm under your muscle memory then we can go ahead and add it together with the chords and the Transitions and everything to play through the song just take those old records off the shelf I'll sit in listen to them by myself today's music a't got the same soul I like that old time of rock and roll don't try to take me to a disco never want to have fun jaming 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 FastTrack and playong guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link for that 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 and feel but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye