Once Upon a December by (Anastasia Movie) Tutorial/Lesson
Once Upon a December
Am, E, A7, D, Dm, B7
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Video transcript
Hey everyone, it's Ellen here and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Once Upon a December from the Anastasia movie on the guitar. So stay tuned if this is something that you'd like to learn. And really quick before we jump into the tutorial, I wanted to take a second to thank one of today's sponsors, Enya Music. I will actually be playing their brand new NovaGo acoustic plus guitar [music] in this video. So, if you like what you see, make sure to check out the link in my description box down below, as well as in this iCard right up here. All right, guys. So, I'm going to be showing you guys an easy beginner way to play this song today, especially if you want to just stick with [music] that strumming pattern. However, first of all, let's talk about our guitar. You will need it to be in standard tuning, and you do not need a capo to play this song. That's how I will be showing it to you today without a co. However, if you are somebody who wants to play in the same key as the movie, or you want to do it for performance or something, go ahead and experiment with your capo on different frets and see which one fits best for you. However, today I will not be using a capo. Um, on top of that, I only have six different chord shapes to show you, and none of them are bar chords, which makes it super beginner friendly, and I have one strumming pattern that you can use for the entire song. However, I think it sounds best if you use picking in this song. [music] So, I actually have two picking patterns that I want to show you as well. Um, but with all of that being said, let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial, and we'll start with the chords. All right, guys. So, like I said, there's only six chords to play through the whole song. And we're going to start with our A minor chord, which looks like this, and sounds like this. And by the way, if you don't know how to read these chord charts that you're seeing on screen, I do cover how to do that in my beginner series, episode 3. So, I'll make sure to link that right here for those of you who need it. The next chord is our E major. Then we have our A7 chord. Next is D. We also have D minor. And then the last chord you need to know is our B7. And those are the six chords you need to know to play this song. All right. So, if you're new to guitar, go ahead and pause the video and just take a few minutes to memorize those chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them. It will make it a lot easier to learn the rest of this song. But once you've done that, go ahead and come back and we can talk about the strumming pattern that I would suggest for this song. Now, as always, if you are brand new to playing guitar and you're not really experienced with [music] singing and playing at the same time, the first thing that I would suggest you do is start with a practice pattern, which is just a simple downstrum. And what you want to do is play this downstrum on every single chord change that you see when you're singing through the song. So, let's go ahead and bring up one of the verses, and I can show you what that looks like. So basically for each chord that you're seeing on the screen, you want to just do a single downstrum and then practice singing through the whole song and take a mental note of what word or syllable you're singing whenever you're doing those strums. Dancing painted wings [music] I [singing] remember. All right, so basically do that whole thing for the whole song and just really know where those chord changes are going to be. It'll help you learn like the strumming and things like that easier. Uh, this is actually something you can do on my Patreon page right now. I do have this whole guide available to print out and download. So, make sure to check that out if you're interested. But now, let's go ahead and talk about the full strumming pattern that I would recommend. So, as you can see, it's not that much harder. It's just down up down up. And it's going to sound like this. So basically what you want to do is take this pattern and play it one time for each chord in the verses and then double it up and play it two times for each chord in the choruses. And I'm going to go through this with you on our A minor chord. You're just going to go down [singing] up [music] down up. Okay, that's the rhythm. 1 2 and 3 and. So let's go ahead and do it a few times just to get used to it. 1 2 3 1. Ready? Go. 1 2 and 3 and 1 [music and singing] 2 and 3 and down. 1 2 and 3 and 1 2 and 3 and down [music and singing] up down up down up. Awesome. So that speed is about the speed you'll need to go to play this song at full tempo. So not super hard. Now, what you want to do is practice putting in these chord transitions in with it. So, remember in the verses, we're only doing this pattern one time for each chord. So, we're starting with our A minor, down, down, [singing and music] up, down, up to E, down, down, up, down, up to A7, down, [singing] down, up, down, up to D minor, down, down, [music] up, down, up. Then keep going. We have D minor to A minor to [singing] D minor to [music] E. All right. So, without stopping it would sound more like this. 1 2 3 1 ready go. A minor E A 7 D minor [music] D minor again a minor D minor again. E All right, awesome. Let's go ahead and finish out the verse because this song is super repetitive. That way you can hear what the whole verse sounds like. All right, perfect. So again, you're just doing this pattern one time through for each chord in the verses. Let's go ahead and bring up the chorus as well, so you can see what that sounds like. Remember, for these chords, we're going to repeat the pattern two times for each chord. So, we start with our D minor. We have down, [singing and music] down, up, twice to A minor, twice to [music] E twice, [singing] back to A minor, down, down, [music] up, down, up. D minor again. Twice. A minor [music] two times. B7 twice. Heat. Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [singing] All right. And from here, you would go back into the verse and then just do the pattern one time for each chord. So, like I said at the beginning, I'm not going to be showing you guys the full movie version of this song because there is a key change, which would add so many other chords to this. So, I wanted to keep this as beginner friendly as possible. So, we're going to just be staying in the [music] same key. And for that reason, we just played through basically the whole song. So, as much as the strumming is pretty simple and sounds pretty good with this song, I do think that because of that kind of music box waltzy kind of quality to this song, you do want to go with a picking pattern. I think it mimics that a little bit better. [music] So, let me go ahead and zoom in and show you some picking patterns that I would recommend with this song. [singing and music] Speaking of picking, I wanted to take a second to thank another sponsor for today's video, Black Mountain Pics. Those of you who have been around on my channel for a while know that I've been using his innovative spring design thumb picks for a while now. He just came out with a new gauge, which is the thin gauge, which is awesome because I always almost always use thin picks whenever I [music] play guitar. Um, but these are really great because they have this really tight extra tight spring actually. And so for people with smaller thumbs or people who sweat a lot, things like that, you can have this thumb pick on your thumb and it like stays in place. It doesn't flip around like other products that I've used in the past. So I'm just a really big fan of Black Mountain Pics. super glad that they came out with a thin gauge. Um, so that's what I'm using here in this video. It makes it really simple to go from strumming into picking. So, if you're interested in checking these out, they do make like a great stocking stuffer for the guitarist in your life. I will make sure to link that down in the description box below, as well as put an iCard right up here. All right, guys. So, let's go ahead and jump into this picking pattern. Before we begin, I do like to number my strings. The low E is six, and [music] it goes 5 4 3 2 1 all the way to the high E on the bottom. um it just makes more sense in my head to number my strings. So hopefully it does in your head as well. But for the rest of this picking portion, I will be referring to these [music] strings as their number. With that being said, let's talk about our right hand. Go ahead and take your pointer, middle, and ring finger, and they're going to live on these bottom three strings, the G, B, and E. Okay? [music] Your thumb is going to move according to whichever note you're playing, like the bass note in each chord. So for example, on our A minor chord, the lowest string that you play is this fifth A string. So your thumb would be there and then these three fingers remember are still living on the bottom three strings. [music] All right. So the way this pattern is going to go is this is the main one I would use for the verses. All you want to do is take your thumb and pick the bass strings. So for a minor that's five. [music] Then I want you to pick all three of these bottom strings at the same time. Pick [music] pick. All right. So it goes bass pick. All right. And that's how you would do it for all of the other chords. So for E we would have six pick. Remember these three fingers are never moving just the thumb is. For A7 we have five pick. [music] For D we have four. For D minor we also have four. And then our last chord is our B7 which would be five. All right. [music] So, that's the whole picking pattern. Now, it's just kind of getting used to putting them together. So, remember, this is going to be just like with strumming. You're going to pick this whole pattern through one time for each chord. So we have a minor [music and singing] to E to A7 to D [music] minor, D minor [singing] again to A minor to D minor to E. All right, [music] so very similar to the strumming. What you want to do is go ahead and practice this until you can kind of do the right hand part without really looking so that you're like used to where you know what strings you're picking. And then at that point, you would just want to make sure you can get it up to tempo. So without stopping at tempo, it would sound like this. We have 1 2 3 1. Ready? Go. A minor E [music and singing] A7 D minor. Dancing [singing] bears, [music] painted wings, things I almost remember, and a song [singing and music] sings once upon a December. All right, so that's basically picking pattern one. Again, I would use that for all of the verses. Um, however, going into the chorus, I have a little bit of a different picking pattern to show you guys. So, let's go ahead and jump into that. All right. So, for the chorus, again, you still want to have your pointer, middle, and ring finger live on these bottom three strings here. And your thumb, again, is the only finger that's going to be moving. What we're going to change here is the actual pattern. So, instead of playing these bottom three strings all together at the same time, [music] what I want you to do is separate your pointer finger from your other two. All right. [music] So, for example, if we were playing a minor, your thumb would do the bass note, which is five. Then your pointer [music] would go in by itself, three. And then you would follow up with your other two fingers. [music] So, it's like base three pick. All right. [music] And for the choruses, you would want to do this two times for each chord. We're starting here on our D minor chord. What you want to do is play the bass note with your thumb. So that's four and then three and [music] then two and one come at the same time. A minor is 5 3 [music] 2 and 1. E is 6 3 2 and 1. [music] And then B7 is 5 3 2 and 1. All right. So, if you were to put that all together and repeat it for each chord, we'd have D [singing and music] minor twice, then you go to A minor twice, [music] then we have E, back to A minor, back to D minor, to A minor, to B7 to E. [music] So you can see here with the rhythm, we're not losing that waltzy 1 2 3 1 2 3 feel. We're just dividing it a little differently between our right hand picking fingers. So al together without stopping, it would be like this. D minor twice. [music] A minor twice. E back to [music] A minor. Someone [music] holds me safe and warm. horsees [singing and music] prince through a silver storm. Figures [singing and music] dancing gracefully across my memory. [singing and music] All right, so that's how I would suggest playing the choruses. Remember with the fingering, it's not really that much different. We're just picking them at different times. Um, one last little thing that's totally optional is at the very end of the song in the very last verse, um, she kind of slows down and a song someone sings once upon a December, like the very last little line there. I would change it up a little bit. So here on our A minor, we have and [singing and music] here on that [music] very last time you do that D chord, I would just do a single downstrum. Someone sings. All right. [music] Then you go back to strumming picking pattern one. Once upon [music and singing] a here we go. December. Okay. Like we're holding it out. So there I would just go through and pick from bottom to top and then back down. So you're going to go on your E chord. Six 3 2 [music] 1 2 3. Okay. So you're just going down and then back up. thumb [music] pointer, [singing] middle ring, middle pointer. And it's just on that E chord that I would suggest doing that once upon [music and singing] a. And then you would go back to picking pattern one. And one other thing that I just noticed that I haven't mentioned is at the very beginning, we're going to be holding our A minor chord for the intro. Something really cool you can do is take your thumb and instead of picking five 3 2 1, [music] you can go back and forth between five and six. Okay? So you're it kind of sounds more like this. of I definitely think it gives it more of that kind of like old school kind of vibe and it sounds a little more waltzy and stuff. So if you want to add that into your intro and into the outro where we hold a minor, you would just go five pick six [music] pick five pick six pick and [music] that would work for the A minor chord. So that would work at the intro and at the end. [singing and music] All right. And that's [music] how I would end that song there. Um, but with all that being said, that is the strumming and the picking. So, let's go ahead and put everything we learned together to play through the whole song. [singing] as a member. One 2 3 1 ready go. [music] Dancing [singing] bears, painted wings, things [music] I almost remember. [singing] and a song. Someone sings once upon a dece. Want to have fun playing through the rest of the song with [music] me? Then make sure to check out my Patreon page where you can unlock access to this as well as all my [music] other fasttrack and playalong tutorials. I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below as well as in this icard right up here. All right guys, so that ends my video today. I really hope that it helped you. if it did, make sure to give me a thumbs up down below, as well as subscribe to my channel. That way, you never miss out on any other new tutorials. Another thank you goes out to today's sponsors, and music and Black Mountain Pics. Thank you so much for sponsoring this video, as well as a special shout out to my top patrons over on my Patreon page. I will make sure to have all of their names listed on screen right now. And of course, a thank you goes out to all of my patrons on Patreon for [applause] supporting my channel and making videos just like this one possible. You guys are awesome. 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 what you want to learn next. I'll even do giveaways on there a few times a year. So, make [music] sure to check it out. But, um, that concludes the video. So, thank you so much for watching. I really hope that it helped and I will see you in my next one [music] coming out really soon. Bye.