Red by Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
Red
G, Bm, A, D
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Video transcript
inone getting in was like TR know somebody nevering him wasad hi my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Red by Taylor Swift so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn like so to play this song in the key that Taylor SLI sings it in you're going to need to have your guitar in standard tuning with your Capo on the second fret um if you don't have a capo you can watch my video here and I teach you how to make one or um you can also play it without a capo using these exact same chords but you'll just have to sing it a little bit lower so unfortunately this song does require you to know a bar chord which is B minor and I know that that's really hard for some of you to play but it's just something that I think you need to practice that because it's a chord that's used very often not only in Taylor of songs but just in all songs so um yeah besides that though it's pretty easy there's only four chords in the entire song and I'll go ahead and teach those to you right now so the first chord you're going to need to know is G which looks like this and sounds like this okay after that you're going to need to know B minor which is our B chord that looks like this and it sounds like this okay after that you need to know a which looks like this and sounds like this and then the very last chord you need to know is D which looks like this and sounds like this so now that you know how to play the four chords you need to know for this song why don't you go ahead and practice transitioning between them until you have them memorized and then go ahead and continue this video and I'll show you some strumming patterns that you can use evered right there you memorizing him was as easy as so I know I always say this but the best strumming pattern I think to start out with if you're a beginner and you have no experience with guitar is just to take each um chord and play it one time so for this song we're going to play G B minor a and you're just going to play each of those chords one time on the beat so for the verses it would sound like this him likeing down deadend street fter the wind passion and soly you can also practice this with the chorus as well so just play each chord one time losing was blue like I never known missing it was dark gr all alone forgetting it wasy to okay so go ahead and practice playing each chord just one time throughout the entire song If You're a beginner until you kind of have the transitioning down and everything and then you can go ahead and move on to some more complicated strumming which I'm about to show you all right so if you have the first strumming pattern down and it's really easy to you one way you can quickly make it a little more interesting without putting in too much extra effort is just to play each of those chords twice so instead of just g d a you're going to play g g e d a okay so at the beginning it would sound like this it was like driving a new R down a dead Street okay you can also use that same pattern for the chorus losing it was blue like never know Miss it was darkone forgetting it was like driving know somebody you never met and if you can hear between each of those pairs I'm actually muting the strings a little bit so instead of letting them ring I'm just going to stop the strings with the palm of my right hand like that and then if you practice that slowly you can kind of get it up to speed so that you can go in Tempo and I don't know about you but I kind of like the way it sounds when you kind of slap the guitar a little bit so don't be afraid to kind of hit it a little bit harder so it'll make that kind of hollow wooden sound cuz I think that that sounds good so the third pattern I have to show you guys may be a little bit familiar if you play a lot of Taylor Swift songs cuz I do use this a lot in my tutorials but the pattern is down down up up down up so with the beginning it would sound like this down down up up down up down down up up down okay um you can play that with the verses him was like driving wind and and of course you can also use that with the chorus losing it was to I never know it was dark allone get in was I know somebody never there okay all right so the last two strumming patterns I have to show you guys actually follow the same um pattern here but the difference between them is which notes you emphasize or which beats you emphasize so I'll show you what I mean by that let's go ahead and start out with eight beats of all downstrokes so go and put your um G chord on and it just be down down down down down down one 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 that by itself is a little bit boring so how we're going to spice that up is we're going to emphasize certain beads so in this first pattern we're going to emphasize it kind of in groups of three so go ahead and try to split this up in your mind into three three and two okay and we're going to emphasize the first beat of each of those groups so instead of 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 we're going to say 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 okay so go ahead and put your G chord back on and it'll sound like this 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 okay and I am kind of muting the strings a little just so they don't ring so you can hear the Rhythm a little better and how I'm actually doing that is I'm just placing my palm kind of on the strings as I play them it kind of has a muted sound cuz there's two ways you can mute your strings one is just to mute it while you play like this the other is to play and then mute it afterwards that one sometimes can get a little confusing when you're playing a fast song like red so I would suggest just go ahead and put your palm onto the strings as you play them doesn't sound so pretty but when you do it in Tempo it sounds fine 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 two okay and so this pattern will work for the beginning middle and end so let's go ahead and try it with the verse so you see what that sounds like loing him was like driving New Street faster than the wind passion and it's so suddenly and of course you can use it for the chorus as well missing it was dark gr all alone forting it was like trying to know somebody never okay so let me go ahead and teach you the very last struming pattern again as I said earlier it's this exact same pattern that we just learned except now we're going to emphasize different beads so if you didn't really like that one that I just showed you maybe you'll prefer this one um this one we're just going to break up into groups of two so one two one two one two one two but um again we're just going to emphasize the first beat of each little group so instead of one two one two one two one two it'll be one two one two one two one two I know this sounds so confusing but when you play with it in the Rhythm it makes a lot more sense so 1 2 1 2 1 1 2 one two okay so you can see when you emphasize the first beat in each of these groups it kind of leaves the second beat a little bit muted and that's exactly what we want because I think it sounds really great for um The Bridge of this song and other parts as well so let me go ahead and show you what I mean by playing this with the bridge remember him comes and flashbacks and Echoes tell myself it's time now got to let go Ming on from him is impossible and I still see it all in my head okay um of course you can also use this for the verse and the chorus just as we have been but I think the coolest thing to do is try to go ahead and practice all of these different strubing patterns that way when you do your cover with your guitar you can mix and match them to make the sound a little bit more interesting so you're not playing the same um pattern the whole way through of course if that's where you're at and that's what you're comfortable with just playing one pattern through that's always fine too so go ahead and practice some of those strumming patterns until you pick the ones that you like and can play them and then um go ahead and continue this video and I'll show you some picking pattern so the first picking pattern I'm going to show you guys is the one that you kind of hear throughout the entire song but especially at the beginning and it sounds like this it's kind of the iconic sound because that's how her song starts out um and I'm going to go ahead and show you guys how to play that so we're going to start out by going ahead and putting our G chord on okay and how we're going to play this is we're going to play the bottom note which is going to be the the sixth or bottom E string okay then we're going to play the third and second strings 6 3 2 again my left hand is still on my G chord and I'm just going to play the sixth string the third string and then the second string 6 3 2 6 3 2 okay now go ahead and change to your B minor chord and we're going to play it pretty much the same way except now we're going to play the bottom string which is the fifth and then again play three and two 5 3 2 5 3 2 okay so practicing going from G G to B minor we're going to go 6 3 2 then go to B minor 5 32 okay and then the last one we need to know is a so go ahead and put your a chord down and this one's going to be just like B minor we're going to play the fifth string and then three and two again so that's 5 3 2 5 3 2 Okay so let's go ahead and practice the entire beginning starting with G for G we're going to play 6 3 2 switch to B minor 5 3 2 switch to a 5 3 2 Okay so let's try that one more time G B minor a and that's pretty much the entire beginning you can play that with all of the verses and even the chorus if you want to Ling him was like driving a new moera down a dead end Street faster than the wind passionate is and it's so suddenly and of course you can use this for the chorus as well if you do want to use this pattern for the CH we're going to have to go ahead and learn D so go ahead and put your D chord down and for this one we're just going to play the bottom string which is four and then three and two again 4 3 2 so D is 4 3 2 and the only reason you're going to need to know that is if you want to play this pattern through the course so for the course it would be G 6 3 2 then go to D 4 3 2 and then end with a 53 2 so the entire chorus would sound like this those miss him was blue like a never known missing him was dark gray all alone for getting it was like trying to know somebody you never met all right um that's kind of the simple version of the picking pattern I can show you one more picking pattern that's a little bit more complicated but um it's not too complicated so don't worry about it go ahead and put your G chord back on and we're going to play this exactly how I just showed you 6 3 2 except this time we're going to go ahead and continue this pattern by playing 3 2 3 again so the whole pattern would be 6 3 2 3 2 3 okay let's try that again 6 3 2 3 2 3 so it sounds like this all together okay and you've probably already caught on it's the same for all the other chord so go ahead and put your B minor chord on we're going to start it out the same as we did in the first pattern 5 3 2 but again we're going to tack on that extra 3 2 3 at the end 5 3 2 3 2 3 again that's 5 3 2 3 2 3 okay so when you put G and B minor together it sounds like this 6 3 2 3 2 3 5 3 2 3 2 3 and you guessed it the last chord is a so let's go ahead and practice a again we're going to start it out the same as picking pattern one 5 3 2 but then we're going to tack on that extra 3 2 3 at the end so all together for a would sound like this 5 3 2 3 2 3 okay so if you put all three of those chords together it sounds like this and personally this is what I would like to play If I were doing a cover of this song for the first verse so I'll go ahead and show you an example of that Ling him was like driving a new are R down a dead end Street faster than the wind passionate is sin ended so suddenly and of course just like in picking pattern one if you would like to use this pattern for the chorus you're going to have to know D so go ahead and put your D chord on and again it's going to start out just like the first picking pattern we're going to play 4 3 2 and then tack on the extra 3 2 3 so all together D is 4 3 2 3 2 3 okay and once you get D down then you can also use this pattern for the chorus losing in was blue like a never known missing was dark gray all alone forgetting it was like trying to know somebody and never met sorry okay so now you guys know everything you need to know to play this song you have your cords your strumming and all of your picking variations go ahead and practice through everything until you're really comfortable with all of it and you've kind of decided what you like and when you come back I'll go ahead and play through the entire song with you and I'll list all the chords in front of you and um yeah we'll play through the entire song together so whenever I do covers of songs I like to add a lot of variation within the guitar part just to make it sound a little more interesting so I'm going to go ahead and show you guys what I'll be doing while playing through the song you don't have to copy everything that I do but if you want to then right go right ahead but I just want to take a minute here to get organized to show you guys what I'm going to do when I play through the song So at the very beginning I'm going to use the first picking pattern I showed you okay um leading into the first verse I'm going to go into the second picking pattern okay that'll lead into the chorus the first time you sing it and for that I'm going to be playing the third strumming pattern down down up up down up okay after that course is over we're going to be going into the second verse and for that I'm going to be playing the fourth strumming pattern and then of course that's lead into the chorus again and for the chorus I'm going to use the third strumming pattern okay um that will end with the bridge part and that's when I'm going to use that fifth strumming pattern okay and that will lead into the chor one more time but this is when it kind of slows down so I'm just going to be playing the first string pattern which is just playing each chord once okay and halfway through that CH when it picks its speed back up I'm going to go back to the fourth struming pattern okay and then um I think I'm just going to stick with that pattern all the way through till the very end of the song so I know that this is really confusing there's a lot of stuff but don't worry when we play through the song again I'll List It On Top which strumming pattern I'm going to be using and um of course if you just want to stick with one strumming pattern the entire time then just ignore everything that I'm saying but um if you do want to do your cover the way that I would do my cover then um go ahead and look at the top and I'll show you which struming patterns or picking patterns that I'll be using for each ver all right so now that we have all the details out of the way let's go ahead and put together everything we've learned and play the entire song together I'm going to go a little bit slower just so that we can all keep up and practice those transitions between strumming and things like that and um I will list all the chords and all the words and everything in front of you right here um so yeah good luck this is read by Taylor loving him is like driving a new moera down a dead end Street faster than the wind passionate and it's so suddenly laughing in is like trying to change your mind once you're already flying through the free Flor like the colors and I'm so bright just before they lose it all losing in was to like never know it was dark gr all alone getting it was back try to know somebody nevering him was loveing was touching him was like realizing all you ever wanted was right there in front of you memorizing him was as easy as knowing all the words to your old favorite fighting with him was like trying to Sol a crossw and realizing there's no right answer regretting him was like wishing you never found out that love could be that strong it was I never know it was dark all get it in never remembering flashbacks and go it's time now got to let go but moving on from is impossible and I still see it all my head and burning red Los I never known missing in with darkar gr all alone getting in with try to know somebody and never loveing him was yeah and that's why he's SP B in my head comes back to me burning yeah this love was like driving a new M down the Dead End Street okay so you made it through the entire song congratulations make sure that if you like this tutorial to go ahead and please like it down below and uh maybe leave a comment letting me know um what you liked about it maybe something that I can improve or just anything you have to say and also if you're looking forward to more tutorials in the future of course you can always subscribe because I do upload a lot of tutorials to my channel as a side note to all of you who have already subscribed to me I'm so sorry I haven't made tutorials very often this past month but I've just been sick and then I was busy and then just everything just all blew up in my face at once so I'm really sorry but I promise I'm going to start uploading tutorials and other videos more frequently to my channel so thank you for staying subscribed and um I also made a Facebook account that I'm going to start linking my polls to like polls as to what songs that you think I should tutor you guys in next and things like that so um if you want to go ahead and visit my Facebook page there's a link down below and um if you like that I don't know maybe a rainbow will fly in your face and uh you'll have an excellent day I don't know anyway thank you so much for all of your support thanks for watching this I hope it helped and I will see you guys next time bye was like driving down dead end straight so if you want to check that out the link is down below and if you like my page then um I don't know maybe a puppy will just come running up to you and look you in the face and you'll just have an awesome day maybe Mickey Mouse will come and take you sleep you away to Disney World with your whole family and you don't have to worry about school or anything you never know what could happen maybe Miss Taylor Swift herself will show up at your house and say hi to you and give you a hug I don't know