Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee Tutorial/Lesson
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
G, Em, C, D, A7, Am7, Bm, D7, EmM7, Em7
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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 rocking around the Christmas tree by Brenda Leigh on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something actually gonna be really great for beginners out there because there's only a handful of chords and they're all pretty easy and addition to that there's also only one strumming pattern that you need to know to play through the whole song one more thing is that you will want to have your capo on the first fret if you want to sing it in the original key if you don't have one you can always go through this whole tutorial without one and it will sound exactly the same except will be a half step lower or you can always click on this video here to watch a TMT on how to make your own capo at home but with all that being said let's go ahead and jump into what the score alright so let's take a closer look at these chords you need to know like I said there are a handful but none of them are a two bag let's go ahead and start with our first chord which is G which looks like this and sounds like this all right after that we've got a minor which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have C which looks like this and sounds like this alright next we have D which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have a seven which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have a minor 7 which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know to play the song is probably also going to be our hardest pitch which is B minor and it's a bard chord and it looks like this and it sounds like this all right and those are the only chords you need to know to play through the song however I am gonna teach you guys a few little bonus chords which will really dress up the song and make it sound a little bit cooler so let's revisit our D chord so anytime I play any sort of D chord you can also you can always just play the regular D but if you want to make it a little bit fancier you can play a d7 chord as well so that looks like this and it sounds like this all right and then the other place you can dress up some chords would be with our E minor chord so again this is our regular a minor but what you can do really easily is take off your ring finger and put your first finger on the first fret right behind your second finger and that actually makes an E minor slash major chord which looks like this and sound like this I know it doesn't sound too pretty by itself but you'll see when we do our transitions how cool that sounds and then from here we can go to our Imai nur 7 chord and all you have to do for that is take your first finger off and so it's just your second finger and so it looks like this and sounds like this all right but let me just reiterate again if you don't want to do all these Imai Newark or I can just do the regular one and if you don't want to do d7 you can just do the regular D throughout the song it'll sound fine but the cool thing about all of our E minor chords is that part in the bridge when it says voices singing let's be jolly it goes from E minor to E minor slash major to E minor 7 so very subtle changes but it really makes the song sound a lot cooler all right so just some fun things that you can put in your cover if you would like to but like I said if you don't want to do all of this brilliant you can always just stick to the basics which would be D and E minor all right so once you have those chords and you can transition pretty easily between them I'm going to go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern that you can know for this yeah extremely beginner at guitar then no worries I always suggest the same thing which is if you're doing a song for the first time what you want to do first is do a strumming pattern that's very simple which is just one down strum on every chord change that way you get to know kind of be more familiar with the song and know where those transitions are going to be and things like that so I'm gonna go ahead and take you through an example of what that sounds like I have my G chord on because that's the first chord in the song and what you're gonna do is just strum it down once okay then we go to our next chord which is our d7 chord then we've got a minor 7 back to d7 back to a minor seven back to D seven and then back to G all right so you pretty much want to take that through the rest of the song and go ahead and practice singing with it that way you know like what word you'll be singing and stuff like that when you're doing those transitions it'll really help you get the actual starting pattern a lot faster so let me go ahead and put in some singing with that one down strum practice pattern and you can hear what that sounds like I've got my G chord on all right you can see kind of how quickly you need to be transitioning and stuff like that so if that that's what you're having a little bit of trouble with those transitions definitely click here to watch a video that I have on how to transition between cords faster or if it's just the fact that you don't have your chords memorized then go ahead and pause the video and make sure to memorize those chords and things like that but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern that you can use with this song okay so like I said at the beginning there's only one strumming pattern you really need to know for this song and here it is as you can see it's just down up up down up so what we're going to do is we're going to play through this pattern for every chord so let me go ahead and show you what it sounds like got my G chord on again cuz again that's the first chord in the song so you got all right and that's the whole pattern but let me go ahead and play it in rhythm so you can hear what it sounds like in rhythm we've got so why don't you guys go ahead and practice that with me go ahead put your G chord on we're just going to play through this strumming pattern together a few times so we've got ready perfect and so now once you have the rhythm down and everything all you have to do is feed that pattern up so let's go ahead and bring it up to tempo again and have my G chord on and we have perfect and then once you have the pattern down and you can do it at tempo we'll go ahead and throw in some of those chord transitions so let's go ahead and practice this through with the intro to the song and here is the chord list for the intro we have G to E minor to C to D so let's go ahead and practice transitioning between these in the strumming pattern so I've got my G chord on to start with so we've got and then Steve so now let's go ahead and practice that one more time without stopping between our chord transitions so we've got Jian alright perfect and so what we can do is apply this same pattern for the entire song but sometimes what's gonna happen is the core transitions are gonna be a little bit faster so what we're gonna do is we're going to change chords in the middle of this pattern so when I go ahead and show you what I'm talking about if we go into our first verse rocking around the Christmas tree we're gonna play at the first two chords which is G and d7 exactly how we just practice so let's go ahead and do that about my G poor done so you can see on those first two courts were holding this pattern through the whole way twice for each chord so here on this next line one of the things about the mistletoe this is when our chord transitions are going to go a little bit faster so what you're going to want to do is put your a minor 7 chord on and now instead of playing through this whole pattern on a minor 7 we're just gonna play through half of it so for a minor 7 we've got and then we're gonna do the rest of this pattern on our next chord which is d7 all right practice that with me again we've got a minor 7 go to d7 and finish off the pattern so without stopping between okay and that's going to be a something that reoccurs in this song a few times because there are a few places in the song where they switch chords pretty quickly so let's go ahead and practice that second part again with my a minor 7 chord on we've got with me one more time I'm going to go ahead and put the words in we've got okay and so once you if you're familiar with the song at all you'll kind of pick up on when we're going to be splitting the pattern for some of the first isn't stuff but also I will be doing a cover at the end of this so that you can go through with me and play along with me for the holes the whole song and then that's another way that you'll be able to get more familiar with where those core transitions are going to be a little bit faster and things like that okay Anna mio I think though that we are still a little bit slower than where we need to be so let's go ahead and take this opportunity to play through the first verse together I'll keep this strumming pattern on the screen and I'll list all of the chord transitions that we're about to encounter but let's go ahead and try to speed it up a little bit so we can get it at tempo so if got our G chord on we've got all right perfect so that's about the feed that we're gonna want to aim for but once you have all of those transitions down and you have the strumming pattern down and you have all the chords memorize anything like that we can actually put together everything that we've learned in this video and play through the entire song so as always I will have all the lyrics on the screen in front of you as well as all the chord transitions and I will highlight which chord you should be on it what part of the song so let's go ahead and put all of these elements together and play through rockin around the Christmas tree by Brenda Lee good luck okay so that concludes my tutorial for rocket around the Christmas tree by Brenda Lee please make sure to give this video a thumbs up down below if you found any part of it helpful as well as subscribe to my channel and if you are already subscribed please make sure to turn on that Bell notification as well that way you don't miss any time I upload another video for you guys as always here are my social media sites in case any of you guys would like to follow me on those I just do little sneak peeks and sometimes some giveaways and I also use my social media to find people to give shout outs to so if you want to get a shout out in my next video like this person right here then go ahead and follow me on any of those but even if you don't thanks so much for watching I hope that this helped I hope you have a happy holiday and I will see you in my next video