Riptide by Vance Joy Tutorial/Lesson
Riptide
Am, G, C, Fmaj7
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Video transcript
hey everyone my name is ellen and today i'm going to be showing you guys how to play riptide by vance joy on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something you want to learn make sure to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on another new tutorial and also follow me on instagram for your chance to win a free lesson with me so this song is going to be super great if you're a beginner to play in the original key make sure your guitar is in standard tuning and then put your capo on the first fret if you don't have a capo it's totally okay to play through this without one it'll just be a half step lower on top of that you only need to know four chords to play through this whole song and none of them are bar chords so it's really really great for beginners as well as two different strumming patterns that you can use um i also will be showing you how to play that little um solo tab thing in the middle at the end of the video so make sure to stay tuned for that with that being said let's go ahead and jump into an overview of what i'll be showing you in this tutorial all right so like i said you only need to know four chords to play through this song those are a minor g c and f major seven so if you're familiar with these chords and that's perfectly great and we can move on however if you do want me to review them for you make sure to skip to this time here where i will go over the chords and how to play them and things like that um after that we're going to jump into strumming and like i said i had two strumming patterns for you the first one is just going to be a simple down strum on the b for every chord change and this is going to be really great if you're a beginner to just kind of get used to the song and i do actually use it in the cover as well and so if you want to go over an example of what this sounds like with the song make sure to skip to this time here however if you are a little more advanced and feel like you don't need to do that then we can move on to strumming pattern two so for strumming pattern two as you can see it's down down up down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this now this strumming pattern is great because you can actually use it to play through the entire song so if you want to break it down and slow it down and go over it a little bit then make sure to go to this time here so that we can break down strumming pattern two and play through an example together however if you feel like you already got the rhythm and everything just by watching me then we can skip forward to the solo tab so the solo tab is kind of short and it's only going to be played once throughout the song and it's going to sound like this so if you want me to break down that tab for you and explain how to play it and everything make sure to skip to this time here where i will go over the solo tab however if you feel like you already got it just through this overview then make sure to go to the play through here at the end where i will go through the entire song and i'll have all the chords and lyrics and everything on screen in front of you so we can play through the song together but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the more in-depth part of this tutorial and we'll start with the chords closest thing to michelle pfeiffer that you've ever seen all right so let's take a closer look at these chords like i said there are only four and the first one is a minor which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our g chord which looks like this and sounds like this next we have our c chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is our f major 7 which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the only four chords you need to know to play this song alright so after you have those chords memorized make sure to give yourself a few minutes to make sure that you can transition between them pretty quickly this song does have kind of a fast tempo so we do need to be able to transition between those chords pretty fast you can check out my tmt right here about how to transition between chords faster if that's something that you're struggling with but once you have that down we can go ahead and move into the strumming patterns that you can use with this song so if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials i always start with the first strumming pattern which is just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord again this is really good if you're a beginner and you're just getting used to playing guitar while singing at the same time and things like that and this is actually also going to be used within the cover so um let me go ahead and go over an example of what this would sound like let's put our a minor chord on since that's the first chord in the song and all you want to do is strum it down once then you go to your next chord which is g strum that down once and then c strum down once all right and so you would basically go through the whole song with just the one down strum on every chord change and then make sure you're paying attention to what word is being sung and things like that to help yourself get more familiar with where those transitions are going to take place so let me go ahead and take you through the first verse and just do an example so you know how to do this for the rest of the song we've got our a minor chord on i was scared of dentists in the dark three four i was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations oh all my friends are turning green two three four you're the magician's assistant in their dreams two three four so basically you want to do that exact same thing and just take it through the entire song until you know that you're familiar with where those chord transitions are going to be and then once you've done that we can move on to our second strumming pattern so our second strumming pattern is not too much harder than our first one as you can see it's just down down up and we're going to play this either once or twice for every chord depending on what part of the song you're in so first let's go ahead and just go over the motions i'm going to put my a minor chord on since that's the first chord in the song and we're just gonna strum down down up down up all right those are the motions why don't you try it with me with your a minor chord on down down up down up awesome so once you have the motions down and that's kind of a comfortable um feeling for you now we want to work on that rhythm so let me go ahead and play it for you in rhythm so you can hear what this strumming pattern sounds like awesome so why don't you play that with me and i'll count us in we're on our a minor chord one two one two three four down down up down up down down up down up awesome so once you get that rhythm down now what you want to do is put in those chord transitions so let me go ahead and put that on screen for you guys and we're going to be transitioning from a minor to g to c for basically the entire song so let's go ahead and practice that through so we've got our a minor chord on and we've got down down up down up switch your g chord down down up down up then switch your c chord and we're gonna play through it twice down down up down up twice all right and that's basically the pattern for the majority of the song so let's go ahead and try that again with our a minor chord on one two one two three four down down up down up g down up down up c down up down up twice again a minor g c a minor g c twice awesome now all you want to do is practice speeding this up because the original song does go about twice as fast as we were just going so we do want to kind of increase our tempo a little bit so let's go ahead and practice that again and we're going to speed up to tempo this time i'll count us in one two three four a minor g c twice down down up down up down down up down and down down up down you're the magician's assistant in their dreams awesome so one of the reasons this is such a great song for beginners is because that a minor to g to c chord progression is going to be basically the entire song so it's going to be really easy for those of you who are just practicing transitioning to just transition between those three chords and not have to worry about you know mixing them up in the order and things like that so um congratulations once you've gotten that far you are playing it with the strumming pattern and that strumming pattern can be applied for the entire song um one extra thing that you can do if you want to is you can add a little bit of a palm mute so what i mean by that is i'm taking the side of my hand this hand with the pick in it i'm just barely lightly resting it on my strings between the bridge and the sound hole and if you lay your hand there while you strum it kind of mutes the strings and just kind of dulls and dampens the sound and i think that this is really good for the very end of the song where they sing the chorus but it's like kind of quieter and things like that so um let me go ahead and show you what that sounds like with the paul muted to the dark side and then when you go back to the chorus you would just start strumming without the palm mute so if you want to add that in there i think it's a cool way to kind of dress up the guitar part a little bit make it sound a little bit different however if you don't want to add the palm mute or you're having trouble with palm meeting it's totally okay to just let all of the strings ring for the whole song it is very on trend with the song so yeah with that being said you can actually play through the entire song now however there is one section in the middle where there's a little bit of a solo tab so let me go ahead and zoom in and show you guys how to play that part all right so i've zoomed in a little bit so we can take a closer look at this solo tab um you only hear it once throughout the song so if you don't feel comfortable with picking or this is not something that you're interested in learning you could totally play your cover without this in it but for those of you who are interested i wanted to go ahead and show you how i would suggest playing this so what you want to do is take your first finger and we're going to bar our first finger across the third fret relative to the capo across all the strings if you do find barring chords hard then that's okay all you really need to borrow are these top two strings but the reason i'm going to suggest barring across is because it's going to be easier for your other fingers so after you bar your first finger across the third fret what i want you to do is take your ring finger and put that on the fifth fret relative to the capo of your g string okay and then i want you to take your pinky and put that on the fifth fret right underneath your ring finger on the b string okay so we've got our ring finger and our pinky so this is just the easiest way i found to play this little um solo line so what you want to do is start off with your pinky off the guitar so you've got your first finger barred and your ring finger on the fifth fret of the g string now what you're going to do is pick that b string without your pinky on it and then while it's ringing you want to just hammer your pinky on to the fifth fret of the b string all right so you're only picking once but you're hammering on when you practice hammering it can be a little hard especially with your pinky finger that's usually people's um weakest fingers so we're just going to pick that b string and hammer our pinky on alright so once you do that pick the b string again with your pinky on so we've got all right from there you're just going to move next door to the high e string and pick that one and now your top e string is going to be held with your first finger your bard okay so um so far we've got this we've got all right good from here you just want to go to your g string and pick that and then go back to your b string and pick that and that is the whole solo tab he plays it through four times in the song so let's go ahead and go through that again we've got our b string with our hammer on and then you pick it again then your high e string and then your g string and then your b string good so you just want to keep practicing that until you can do it a little bit faster and then for this i am using a pick i feel like if you're going to strum with the pick then it's easier just to use the pick to also do the solo tab but you could also just do this with your fingers if you wanted to so this will take a little bit of practice especially if you're not used to that kind of barring action it can take a toll on your finger and your hand muscles so just give yourself time to practice this and um yeah this is just the fingering that i would suggest to play through this so again you want to just slow down play it slow four times and then slowly speed it up when you start getting more used to the hammer-ons and all of that kind of stuff and then with enough practice you should be able to play it at tempo alright awesome but that is the entire um tab and again you only have to play that four times through in the middle of the song and again if you don't want to you could totally just hold down your c chord during that part and that'll work as well this is riptide by vance joy good luck so all my friends take it away that i think she's been living on the highest i love the words wrong i just gotta i can't have it i can't have it any other way i swear she's destined for the screen thing to michelle pfeiffer that you've ever seen oh lady running down to the river taking away to the dark side i want to be your you're gonna sing the words i love you i want all right so that was my tutorial for how to play riptide by vance joy if you liked it make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on another new tutorial 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 things you want to see and i do a monthly guitar lesson giveaway on my instagram for free so make sure to follow me on there if you want to enter this is also where i go to find people to feature in my new segment forever features this week we have issa playing amazing grace let's give it a listen grace how sweet the sound that saved the wretch like me so if you want to be next make sure to follow me on instagram and post a short cover of you playing any song you learned from any of the tutorials on my channel use that hashtag forever features in the description so i can find it and the next feature spot could be you and one last little plug if you liked the shirt i was wearing in today's tutorial this is my brand new guitar babe design which you can find along with lots of other 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