Radioactive by Imagine Dragons Tutorial/Lesson
Radioactive
Am, C, G, D, Cmaj7
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Video transcript
foreign and today let's learn how to play Radioactive by Imagine Dragons a quick overview of everything I'll be teaching in this tutorial today and with that being said let's get started alright so we're only going to have five chords to play through this song and we're going to start with our a minor 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 check out my free beginner course right here all right the next chord is our c chord that is our G chord then we have our D chord and the last chord you need to know is C Major seven and those are the only five chords to play through this song so go ahead and take some time to pause the video and memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier and if making those quick chord transitions is something that you're struggling with I would recommend checking out my practice with me Series where we build that skill together so yeah once you've done that we can talk about strumming now the first thing I would recommend doing is going through the whole song and practice singing through it with a single down strum I like to call this a practice pattern what it does is it just helps you get used to where those chords are transitioning throughout the song so here's a quick example of what that would look like waking up to cash and dust I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust so basically just do that for the whole song and get really familiar with where those chords are transitioning if you would like to print out a guide with everything that I'm teaching in this video make sure to check out my patreon page I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below as well as Miss icard right up here so the first strumming pattern I'd recommend for this song as you can see is just down up mute and I would recommend this to play through the verses so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk about the Rhythm alright guys so this is going to be an eighth note Rhythm and the strums are going to come on the one the and of the two for that up strum and then you're gonna mute your strings on the third beat so we have one two three four down up mute one and three one and three you just want to do this one time for each chord and again I would recommend this for the verses to Ash and dust breathing in the chemicals all right so again I would recommend using this for the verses but for the courses I have a different strumming pattern so let's go ahead and talk about strumming pattern two all right guys pattern two does have a few more strums in it but it's just as simple as you can see it's down down up down up so let's go ahead and talk about this Rhythm alright guys so this is going to be another eighth note Rhythm we're gonna have down down up down up and those are going to land on one two and four and Okay so we've got down down up down up one two and four and one two and four and now when you use it in the song it is going to go a little bit faster so this is used again for the choruses as well as in the intro so at full Tempo it sound more like this one two and four and one two and four and down down up down up down down up again you want to play this one time for every chord and I would recommend using it for the course right so again this is also used in the intro so that's how I would play that alright guys so again I would recommend pausing the video and take as much time as you need to memorize how these strumming patterns go and really take some time to internalize how it feels it'll make playing or singing the song while playing through the full string pattern much easier and also just remember that these are always suggestions so if you find yourself adding up strums or down strums and you know you have your own Rhythm that you would like to follow I'd definitely recommend going with those it does make the playthrough a lot easier but once you've done that we can go ahead and continue and play through the song one two three four one two ready go foreign 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 play along guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below as well as in this icard right up here if you enjoyed learning this song with me I would definitely recommend checking out this video it's got a really similar Vibe and it's just as easy to play so I'll see you over there