Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by Johnny Marks Tutorial/Lesson
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Cadd9, Bm7, Am7, G, Em, EmM7, Em7, A, A7, D7, D
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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 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on the guitar. And today I am featuring my Orangewood Brooklyn guitar. So if you like what [music] you see, I will link more information about it down below. Here's a quick overview of everything I'm going to be covering in this tutorial [music] today. And with that being said, let's go ahead and get started. All right, guys. So, we do have 11 different chord shapes we need to know to play through this song, but don't let that overwhelm you because most of them are just used one time in the intro. And also, none of them are bar chords. So, these will all be open chords. [music] Okay? So, great for beginners. Let's go ahead and start with our first one, which is our C add 9, 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, 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 B minor 7. We also have our A minor 7. Next is our G major. [music] Now we have our E minor. After that is our E minor major 7. And then there's our E minor 7 followed by our A major chord. Then there's our A7 chord. >> [music] >> There's our D7 chord. And then last is our D major chord. And those are the 11 chord shapes you need to know to play through this song. And really quick, while we're in this section, I wanted to point out two things to you guys. One is the G major chord. We're using four fingers like this. You might have learned G with just three fingers like that, which you can totally use to play through this song. But the reason I would suggest this four-finger G is because we're going to be going back and forth between our G and our D chord a lot. And if you do it this way with your four fingers, your ring finger will stay here on that B string. And that'll help you transition into your D chord because that note is also played with the ring finger. So basically, you can use your ring finger as an anchor between these two chords [music] to help the transition go a little bit easier. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is the E minor chord shape. I taught it to you guys with your middle finger and your ring finger. You might have also learned it with your pointer and your middle finger. The reason I'm using this fretting shape today and the one that I would suggest for you guys is because we're going to go from our E minor to our E minor major 7 to our E minor 7. So, if you do it this way with your middle finger and your ring finger, it just makes for an easier transition because you're going to go from here [music] to just putting your index finger down and lifting your ring and then taking off your index finger. [music] All right, so just an easier transition if you fret your E minor that way. Um, but these are just suggestions and uh those are the chords you need to know to play through this song. So, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really look over these chord shapes, get them memorized, and also practice transitioning back and forth between them because it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you. Um, but once you have these chords under your belt, we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would suggest for this song. So, if you're brand new to playing guitar or you're somebody who struggles with playing guitar and singing at the same time, the first thing I would suggest 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. Not only is this a great way to practice putting the singing and the guitar parts together, but it'll also give you a chance to see what word or what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing. So, a good example of where this happens is right at the intro of the song. We're actually going to be using the single downstrum for the entire intro. That's what those little stars on the guide mean. So, let's go ahead and go through the intro just so you can see an example. You know Dasher and Dancer and Pancer [singing and music] and Vixen, comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. What [music] do you recall, [singing] the most famous [music] reeer of all. right, so that's an example of how you can use the single downstrum. It's not only great for practice, but it works throughout the song as well. And if you are interested in downloading this guide, I do have it available for free on my Patreon page. So I will make sure to link that in the description box down below. But once we get through this intro part, then we'll go into more of a full strumming pattern. So let's go ahead and talk about that next. All right, guys. So moving into the more recognizable part of this song, we are going to be filling out the strumming pattern a little bit more. So as you can see here on screen, we're going to be counting this in an eighth note rhythm. So it's going to sound like this. We have 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and four and down down up up down up down up All right. And what we're going to do is play through this pattern either one time or two times per chord. And so basically, let's go ahead and start here at the G chord at Rudolph. Most of the song is going to go back and forth between our G and our D chord. So, we're going to go G down up [singing and music] down up. And we're going to do it twice on that first line. Moving into the next line. G. [singing] Switch to D. [music] All right. Down. [singing] Down. Up. Up. Down. Up. Twice. Three [music] times to D. Next line. E twice, three times to G. Rudolph the red [singing] str reeer had a very shiny [music] nose. And if you ever saw it, you would even sing it close. [music] All right. So, the structure of this song is pretty simple. We're just going to be using the strum pattern throughout. So, let's go ahead and go through the rest of this main part. All of the other [singing] rain used to laugh and call. They never let poor Rudolph join in any games. All right, here we're getting into this more kind of like bridge section of the song. And here we are going to change things just a little bit. You can see the chords are changing. So, we're starting on our C add 9. And the strumming pattern is going to stay the same except for one spot. So, let's go ahead and go over it. On our C add 9, we have a full pattern. Down, [singing] down, up, up, down, up to G. [music] And then on this line, Santa came to say we're going to go quickly from our A minor 7 [music] to our D to our G. So on our A minor 7 and our D chord, you can see this little hash mark. That just means we're going to split the measure. So we're going to play both of these chords within the one measure. So for the strumming pattern just for these two chords, I would change it to down down up on A minor 7 to down [music and singing] down up on D. And then when you get to G on say, you would go back to the full strumming pattern. Okay? So that bridge section there goes C add nine down [singing] up up down up [music] G split back to G. And one [singing and music] foggy Christmas Eve, Santa [singing] came to sing, [music] Rudolph, with your nose so bright. Right here, something fun you can do is on our A7 chord, I would just do a single downstrum. [music] And then on beat three, we're going to mute our strings. So we have 1 2 [music and singing] 3 4. And then same thing on D7. 1 [music] 2 3 4. All right. So, to mute my strings, I'm just taking my hand and stopping the strings from ringing with the side of my palm here. Rudolph, [music] and singing] you sleigh tonight. All right. And then we go into the end of the song and we're going to play the full strumming pattern for all of these chords. and how [singing and music] the reeer loved him as they shout it out with blue. Rudolph the redo stranger. You'll go down in [singing] history. And that's the end of the song. One fun way that I like to end the song is I'll go on the word history. I'll go from our G to [music] our C add 9 back to our G. All right. So, I like to play it like this. You'll go down in history. [music] All right. Just all downrums like that. And that's how I like to end the song. Of course, feel free to be creative on how you like to end the song. But that is a simple strumming pattern that you can totally use to play through this entire song. So, go ahead and pause the video again and take as much time as you need to really get used to this strumming rhythm. It's one that you'll see commonly used in a lot of other songs. So, once you learn it here, you can apply it to so many others as well. Um, but once you have the strumming rhythm and those chords and the transitions and everything under your belt, we can go ahead and put everything we've learned in this tutorial together to play through the song. You know, Dasher [singing] and Dancer and Pancer and [music] Vixen, comet and Cupid and [singing] Donner and Blitzen. But [music] do you recall the most [singing and music] famous reeer of all, Rudolph the Redeer? Sorry guys, but due to copyright reasons, I can't post the full song here on YouTube. [music] But you can access this playalong video totally for free on my Patreon page. I'll link it in the description box down below. [bell]