Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan Tutorial/Lesson
Pink Pony Club
A7, D, Em, Bm, G, A
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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 Pink Pony Club by Chapel Rone on the guitar. And today I am featuring my Enya Nova Go SP1 sparkly guitar. So if you like what you see, I'll make sure to link more information about it in the description box 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 pick. So, if you want a little bit of voting power in the songs that you see me teach here on my channel, make sure to check it out. I will link that down below as well. 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 six different chord shapes to play through this entire song. And we're going to start with our A7, which looks like this, and sounds like this. All right. And 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 D major. We also have our E minor. Next is our B minor. There's also our G major. And the last chord shape is our A major. And those are the only six chords you need to know to play through this song. All right, guys. So, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as 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 for you. And if this is a skill you're currently struggling with, I do have an entire practice with me chord transitions playlist right here on YouTube. So, I will link that in the corner for those of you who need it. But once you have these chords under your belt, then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would recommend using 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 I was just doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and go through the entire thing with just a single downstrum 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 I mean. But I can't ignore the crazy visions of me in LA. All right. So that's just a really quick example, but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song. And just really make sure you know where those chords are going to be changing. Something you'll notice when you do this is that order that we just played it in. D, E minor, B minor, G, is going to be most of the song. The only place it changes is the bridge. So, this is all stuff that you'll pick up on after you do the single strum practice pattern. And this 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'll make sure to leave that link in the description box if you're interested. But once you've done that and you're comfortable with those chord changes, then we can go ahead and add to this downstrum to make more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song. All right, guys. So, I have a couple of different suggestions for strumming for this song. And we're going to start with the very easiest one. It's not that much harder than the practice pattern we just did. We're just going to double it up. So, we're having two downstrums on each chord. So, with D, we have down. And then you just want to mute your strings by tapping on them. So, down mute to E minor, down, down, mute, B minor to G. So, with this double downstrum pattern, I think it sounds really great at the beginning of each chorus. You're just gonna go, "God, what have you done? You're a Pink Pony girl and you dance at the club." Oh, mama. I'm just having fun on the stage in my heel. It's where I belong at the All right. So, that's just a quick example. if you wanted to do that. I think the double downstrum pattern at the beginning of the chorus really mimics the original song and it's super easy to do. And from here, what I would do is with this same strumming pattern, we're just going to keep the downstrums going for the rest of the measure. And this is going to be more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for the rest of the song. Um, but I'm going to show it to you guys at the second half of the chorus here. So, basically what we're going to do is on each chord, we're going to play this pattern one time through. So each chord gets eight downstrums. So we have D 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and to E minor 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and B minor to G. All right. So you can see here how it kind of like fills in the rest of that empty space and it kind of just brings it up a notch. So, I think if you start with the double downstrum at the beginning of the chorus and then build into the all downstrum for the last half of the chorus, it sounds really good. Um, but one thing about this strumming pattern is it can start to sound pretty muddy if you're just doing a bunch of downstrums. So, one way that you can kind of add a little bit of a technique in there to make it uh sound a little more rhythmic is we're going to add some accents. So, if you don't know, accents are basically just really emphasized strums. So instead of strumming eight regular downstrums, you want to kind of strum some of these arrows with a little extra emphasis. So I'm going to go ahead and turn some of these arrows green. And on these green arrows, I want you to kind of strum with a little bit more force. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And you can see in my right hand with my strumming, I'm having a wider motion with the strumming. Another way you can think about it is when you have the accented strums, you strum all the strings and then on the non-acented strums or the regular purple arrows, you can kind of just concentrate more on the the bottom strings. So we have 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and hopefully you can hear those are standing out. So once you add those accents into the strumming pattern and you string it all together, you'll hear it has a little bit more of a beat, which is going to be reminiscent of the original song. So we've got D 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and E minor D minor. Add those accents in. Pink pony claw. I'm going to keep on dancing. Pink pony claw. I'm going to keep on dancing down west. I'm going to keep on dancing with pink club. All right. Sorry, I can't sing this song. It's super high for me. But as you can see, if we go from the double downstrum at the beginning of the chorus and build into that all downstrum pattern for the end of the chorus, it really brings the song up a notch and kind of builds it up in suspense and in interest. So, that's my suggestion for the first strumming pattern. Now, if you're comfortable here, you could use the strumming pattern for the entire song. Uh, but I did want to show you a second option as well that sounds really great with this song. So, let's go ahead and talk about strumming pattern two. All right, guys. So, for the second strumming option, it's a very classic strumming pattern. It's our down up down up pattern. It's going to sound like this. We have one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down up up down up down down up up down up. All right. I say this is a classic pattern because a lot of times you can use this pattern to play through lots of especially pop songs but any songs that are in four four time. This really works out well for a lot of them and it works out well here too. So basically what you're going to do is play this pattern through one time per chord. So again, we're starting on our D. We have down, up, up, down, up to E minor to B minor to G. All right. And the great news is that's about the speed you want to go to play through this as well. So if you want to apply the second strumming option, that would work throughout the song as well. Where I like to use this is the second verse and the second preorus. We've got D down, up, up, down, up. E minor, D minor to G. You got it. And then, like I said, I like to keep that going in the precourse as well. I think my wicked dreams a year from Tennessee. Oh, Santa Monica, you've been too good to me. All right. Now, the only place that's different in this song with the chord progression is going to be our bridge. For the bridge, let's go ahead and bring that up. The chords are going to be a little different here. So, we're going to go from G to A to B minor to E minor. All right. And the bridge is super simple. We're just keeping it with a simple downstrum. Don't think I've left you all behind. Still love you in Tennessee. You're always on my mind. Mama, every Saturday I can hear your southern draw a thousand miles away. All right. Then you go back to the chorus, back to the double downrum, to the full downstrum pattern. And I would just keep the all downstroum pattern to the end of the song. Now with these strumming patterns, you have the option to either stick with the all downstrum pattern or you can do this more island strum pattern that's super common. You can also kind of figure out where you like to mix and match it. And that makes the guitar part sound a lot more interesting if you're going to perform this for some reason. Um, and then one last thing I wanted to show you guys is at the very beginning of the song after verse one when we go into our very first pre chorus. It's very piano heavy there. And there's actually a really pretty arpeggiated picking pattern we can use. So I want to teach you guys that next. It's totally optional, but I think it's really fun to play. So let's go ahead and talk about that. All right, guys. So again, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get these strumming patterns under your belt. Both of these rhythms are fairly common. You'll see them used a lot in a lot of specifically pop songs. So, if you need help with either of these, I do have both of them in my practice with me strumming series here on YouTube as well. So, I'll make sure to link that in the corner. But once you get the rhythm down and you can transition between your chords while playing through the strumming pattern, then I wanted to teach you guys a totally optional but really fun way to play the first precourse, which is with a picking pattern. So, let's go ahead and talk about picking next. All right, guys. So, like I said, this picking pattern is totally optional, but I do think it sounds really pretty and it really matches the piano that you'll hear at the beginning of the song. So, um, basically, let's go over a couple of rules. With our left hand, you do want to still just be holding the same chord shapes we've been practicing down with your left hand. So, nothing's changing there. Your right hand, we're going to switch from using a pick, and we're going to drop the pick and use our fingers to finger pick. And with that, there are a couple of rules there, too, as well. Basically, what I would like you to do is take your pointer, middle, and ring finger, and you're going to keep those here on the bottom three strings. And then your thumb is going to be in charge of the top three strings depending on what chord we're playing. Okay? And then also for this part of the tutorial, I am going to be referring to my guitar strings as numbers. So low E is six and it goes 5 4 3 2 1 all the way to the high E or the bottom E, the thin E. Okay. Um, so I'm going to be referring to them as numbers. And with all of that being said, let's go ahead and break down this picking pattern. We're basically just going to be playing an arpeggiated back and forth picking pattern. So, what I want you to do is put your D chord on your left hand. Now, remember your pointer, middle, ring finger are going to be here on the bottom three strings. And your thumb for D is going to be on this fourth D string cuz that's our root note. Okay? And what I want you to do is we're going to go thumb, pointer, middle, pointer. Okay? That's the first half. 4 3 2 3. And then for the second half, you're going to use your ring finger on the E string or one. And then go back 3 2 3. All right. And really pause and take time with this pattern because it's going to be the same pattern for the rest of the chords as well. So for D, we've got thumb, pointer, middle, pointer, ring, pointer, middle, pointer. You can kind of hear the back and forth of that. All right. So again, if you're first time picker, you know, things like that, make sure that you get the coordination of your fingers down. It can take a lot of practice, but once you get it, you can apply this pattern for the rest of the chords as well. So, let's go ahead and talk about our E minor next. With your E minor, your three fingers are still going to be here on the bottom three strings, but you're going to move your thumb to the top E string, okay? Cuz again, that's our bass note. But the rest of the pattern is the same. So now instead of four, we have six. So we're going to go six 3 2 3 1 3 2 3. Okay. So with your fingers, it should feel kind of the same. Thumb, pointer, middle, pointer, ring, pointer, middle, pointer. Okay, good. And so then the next chord is B minor. Now your thumb is going to move to this bass note which is going to be our fifth A string. Okay. Um other than that the pattern's the same. So we have 5 3 2 3 1 3 2 3. Okay. Same fingers for all the strings that we've been practicing. And then for your last chord, your G chord, it's going to look just like E minor. We've got 6 3 2 3 3 1 3 2 3. All right. And those are all the chords that we'll be using in the pre chorus. So sped up just a little bit and all strung together. It's going to sound like this. We've got D to E minor to B minor to G. All right. And again, the place I would recommend using this is going to be right at the beginning of the song after the first verse. We're going to go into that first pre chorus. I'm having wicked dreams of leaving Tennessee. Here's Santa Monica. I swear it's calling me. Won't make my mama proud. It's going to cause a scene. She sees her baby girl. I know she's going to scream. All right. And then from here, we would go back to the strumming patterns that I taught earlier in this tutorial. And like I said, this entire picking section is totally optional, but I do think it sounds really pretty and matches the piano version um of this song. So, if you wanted to, I would recommend doing this picking pattern for that first pre chorus. All right, guys. So, again, one last time, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to practice this picking pattern. Um, it can get a little confusing with the coordination and stuff like that, but I promise once you get one picking pattern down, it makes it a lot easier to learn all sorts of other different picking patterns. So, definitely pause and try your hardest on this. And again, it's totally optional. So, you can totally ignore this part as well if you wanted to. Um, but once you have this down and you've got the chords and the strumming and everything else, we can go ahead and put together everything we've learned in this tutorial to play through the song. But I can't ignore the crazy visions of me in LA. I heard that there's a special place where boys and girls can all be queens every single day. I'm having wicked dreams. Want to have fun jamming 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 playalong guitar tutorials. I'll make sure to leave a link for it 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.