Say You Won't Let Go by James Arthur Tutorial/Lesson
Say You Won't Let Go
G, Gsus2/F#, Em7, C, Dsus4
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Video transcript
you hey everyone my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play say you won't let go by James Arthur on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn I met you in the dark you Lydia you so this song is actually pretty easy to play if you're a beginner because there's only four chords you need to know to play the entire song and they're all pretty easily and none of them are bard cords or anything so that's a plus and also to play it in the same key as the original song you will want to use your capo and put it on the third fret if you don't have one it's okay you can actually just play this entire tutorial through it'll just be a little bit lower than his version and really quick I just wanted to take a minute to let you guys know that this video is sponsored by my friend Leo over at wooden Capo's I've talked about him before he makes beautiful wooden Capo's for guitar and ukulele he makes these by hand and so each one is beautifully crafted and the cool thing is he can personalize your capo by choosing different kinds of wood this is my Korean wood capo and he also does engravement so you can see my firmer faithful butterfly logo on this one as well so if you are looking for a personalized beautiful capo like this instead of just a regular old plastic one then please go visit his website I'll link it right here and I'll also link it in my description box below as well as all of his social media that you can follow he's always coming up with different ways to improve his design and I just really strongly believe in him and his company so if you were looking for a gift for yourself or for another guitar player in your family or one of your friends please go check out his website and consider buying one of these beautiful Capo's for yourself or someone you love alright so back to the tutorial like I said you only need to know four chords to play the whole song so let's go ahead and jump into what those look like you get it you make me feel this place all right so let's go ahead and go over the chords you need to know for this song the first one is G which looks like this and sounds like this and I know a lot of you guys might play G like this without using both the ring and the pinky finger but if you want to attempt the picking pattern I want to show you at the end then make sure you're actually playing it with this fingering because it will make a difference our next chord is G suspended 2 / F sharp which looks like this and sounds like this Oh so I'm spending this is kind of a new cord for a lot of you if it's a little bit too hard to play you can substitute it with D suspended 4 which looks like this and sounds like this but this substitution will only work for the strumming patterns if you want to learn the picking pattern you do need to try to learn this fingering which is the Jesus 2 slash F sharp chord and I will probably be referring to this chord as GS 2 for the rest of the tutorial just because it takes a long time to say the entire chord name alright next we've got a minor 7 which looks like this and sounds like this and then our very last chord is C which looks like this and sounds like this and those are all the chords you need to know for the song alright so once you have your chord shapes memorized go ahead and practice transitioning from one to the next one because this song does follow the same chord progression for the entire song which is G to the G suspended to slash F sharp chord or D says for if that's what you want to play instead to E minor seven to C so go ahead and practice your chords in this order until you're comfortable transitioning between them and then once you are let's go ahead and jump into some strumming patterns that you can use with this song in you most I'm gonna love you too my mom's give out alright so like I always say the first running pattern you should start out with especially if you're a beginner is just a one single down stroke on the beat for each chord as you go through the song that way you can get used to where those chord transitions are going to be taking place so go ahead and put your G chord on since that's our first chord in the song and we're just going to strum it down once move on to your next chord strum down once our next chord a minor 7 and then our last chord see and that's the whole strumming pattern now you just want to go through and kind of sing through the song and practice those transitions just so you can get more familiar with where those are going to take place so we've got G Jesus too a minor 7 and see I met you in the dark you lit me up you made me feel as though I was enough we danced the night away we drank too much I held your hair back when you would throw it up so go ahead and practice through the whole rest of the song just like that until you know where all those quarter transitions are to be expected and then we can move on to our second strumming pattern so our second strumming pattern is still very simple to play here it is it's just down down down up and what we're going to do is we're going to play this through once for each chord change so if you go ahead and put your G chord on since that's the first chord in the song we're just going to play through this pattern in rhythm so it goes down down up down down very simple right so now let's go ahead and add in those chord changes so we've got G down Donna cheats us two down Donna minor seven down see people ooh I bet you ever go you lit me you made me feel as though I was in love we danced the night away we drank too much I held your head back all right and if you wanted to you could apply that strumming pattern for the entire song and it would sound really beautiful but if you are up to it let's go ahead and learn one more strumming pattern that's a little bit more detailed that you can use throughout this song so here's our third strumming pattern as you can see it's a little bit longer and more detailed than our previous two but it still is pretty easy to pick up on once you get the rhythm and the hang of it so let me go ahead and play it for you so you can hear the rhythm we've got down up up down up up down down down up up down all right so go ahead and put your G chord on with me and let's go through that a little bit slower we've got down up up down up up down down up it's kind of maybe hard to hear right now since we're not doing it in rhythm so let's go ahead and put it in rhythm we've got down up up down up up down down up down up um up down all right so let's go ahead and put in those chord transitions we've got G up down up down down up chooses two a minor 7 G up up down up up down down and Jesus - don't down up a minor 7 now we'll speed it up gee Oh - Evan boom just a little bit more nothing of yet I met you oh you let me you made me feel so I was loved we did not away we train too you all right if that strumming pattern was just a little bit hard for you you can always refer back to one of the first two strumming patterns or if you just want to pause this video and practice this pattern through slowly I would recommend that until you can gradually speed it up on your own and then you can play through the song with that strumming pattern and I almost forgot to mention there is one more little thing you could add to this third strumming pattern which is the palm mute and it kind of changes the sound of the pattern itself so once you get it up to tempo then go ahead and try putting the side of your playing hand generally lying it on the strings between your sound hole and your bridge and so what we're going to do now is every time we strum this pattern when we strum our down strokes we're going to leave our hand gently on the strings and what that's going to do is make it a little bit more mute so instead of it ringing we're gonna mute the sound okay so if you apply that to our third strumming pattern we've got down thumb hook down up up down down up up down up up down down now I'm not using a pig so I'm using the side of my thumb so it does sound a little bit more similar but if you are using a pick to play this song and you're just sticking with those strumming patterns then this is a great way to spice things up a little bit and to give this third strumming pattern just a little extra interest so if we put that together with our chord changes we've got G G says 2 minor 7 C and I just like to add this into some of my covers because I like to dress up the guitar as much as I can so even if I'm using the same strumming pattern if you add a palm you it just makes it sound a little bit more different so go ahead and try to put that in there if you would like to alright so beautiful as this song sounds with these strumming patterns I'm going to go ahead and zoom in and show you guys some picking patterns that you can use just say alright so let's go ahead and jump into our picking pattern I'm going to teach it to you kind of in steps so let's go ahead and put on our first chord which is our G chord and what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to put your thumb on the bottom sixth string and with these two fingers your pointer and your middle finger you're going to want to put those on the third and second string respectively so we've got a thumb pointer middle on six three two so when our left hand is in our G shape what you're going to want to do is go ahead and pick your thumb and then pick these two strings at the same time okay so we've got and then right when you pick those two strings you want to kind of mute your strings really quick so we've got and all I'm doing with my hand is when I pick those third and thickest strings I'm just kind of forming a fist with my hand and just kind of stopping the strings from ringing okay so after we do that what we're going to do now is with your third finger on your G chord you're going to want to actually lift that off the string so now when you pick the third and second string with your right hand those are the notes you should get so what we're going to do is thumb these two together mute and then play it again with our third ring finger from our chord lifted let's try that again we've got six third and second fist and mute and then pick those third and second again but with your ring finger lifted on your cord all right and then once you pick those two strings again with your ring finger lifted you're go again going to want to make another fist with your playing hand and just mute those strings again so we've got all right if you're having trouble muting these strings with your fist you can also just kind of open your hand and slap it whatever is easiest while you're picking so that's our G chord let's go ahead and move on to our next chord which is our g SS - slash f sharp chord and now we're going to do the same thing you're going to pick with your thumb the sixth Bond string and again with your pointer and your middle finger you're going to pick the third and second strings and then mute and then again same thing we're going to lift our ring finger off from this chord and then when we pick these two strings it'll sound like this so we've got it's the same pattern as earlier so with our G chord we have then you switch your chords and it's the same pattern so now we can go ahead and go to our E minor 7 chord again it's the same thing we're going to pick our sixth string with our thumb with these two fingers you're picking the same two strings and then again with your ring finger you're going to lift that off the string and pick these again so we've got mute lift your ring finger mute so hopefully you're getting the pattern by now let's start over from our G chord we've got and then we switch to our GS s chord and then our E minor seven chord so now on our last chord we're going to switch our hand shape to a C chord and this is where it changes a little bit so now with our thumb instead of playing the bottom sixth string we're actually going to be picking the fifth string with our thumb but then again these two fingers are still on the same strings we've been picking the third and second so we've got some pick these strings mute it again and then this time we're not going to lift any of these fingers off we're going to keep it in the C shape and then just pick those two strings again five pin mute so if you string that onto the end of everything else we practice we have G G says you minor 7c and that's the whole pattern so because this is all you can handle picking wise you can actually just use this picking pattern and sing it for the whole song I met you in the dark you lit me up you made me feel as though I wasn't love we danced the night away we drank too much I loved your hair when you would throwing them alright so that's pretty much the backbone of this picking pattern but let's go ahead and make it a little bit more fancy and so I'm going to go ahead and show you some things you can add to this basic pattern to dress it up a little bit more so let's start over from our G chord so we're going to start it out the same but here instead of muting your strings again you're going to let it ring and then we're going to add a little bit of picking so we've got so here I'm going to reap ich that sixth string with my thumb and then I'm going to reap ich the third string with my pointer finger and then my thumb again all right so we've got the pointer thumb six three six so we're just tacking that on to the end so we've got you now you try that with me again all right moving on we've got our G suspended chord so again we're starting this off the same we've got six three and two mute lifts our ring finger off three and two and then here's where it changes instead of muting our strings we're going to pick our sixth string with our thumb and then our third string with our pointer finger alright so from the beginning again we've got all right so you can see we're just kind of adding more to the end so if we go back to our G chord we've got alright go ahead and pause the video and practice if you're having a little trouble with this because I'm when we get to the ending of this next phrase it's going to get a little bit harder so one more time we've got G Jesus too all right and when you're ready let's go to our next chord which is E minor seven again this is starting out the same but again here instead of muting our strings like we did earlier we're going to do the same thing we did with our G chord we're going to take our thumb pick the sixth string use our pointer finger pick the third string and then use our thumb to pick the sixth string again all right so it's kind of following that g-chord that we did so from the beginning we've got you alright and lastly we've got our C chord what we're going to do is again we're going to use our thumb to pick the fifth string first then our third and second mute and then pick again so here's what we're going to tack on at the end we're going to use our thumb to again play the fifth string and then with your middle finger you want to pick the second string and then as you pick that you want to take your first finger here in your chord shape and lift it off the string alright and again I'm using my middle finger to pick the second string and I'm using my first finger up here to flick it off of the fret so again C is 5th string 3rd and 2nd mute 3rd and 2nd again 5th string and then we're going to use our second finger to pick our second string flick off our 1st finger from the fret all right so let's start from the beginning we've got G you all right I know it seems really difficult but this is something that does require practice so make sure to pause this video and rewind to the places where you can't play it and just keep practicing those sections one section at a time until you can play through the entire thing so just practice it one chord at a time all right and then once you get those individually just try stringing them together you all right and if that was easy for you there's one more thing you can add to make this just a little bit more fancy and what's going to change is your E minor seven chord so you can hear that I'm doing that same flick off technique that I did with our C chord so with your E major seven you're going to start it out the same and then here you're going to play your sixth string with your thumb again and then using your first finger you're going to play the third string and see with my Imai 'nor chord i'm going to be taking my middle finger here and moving it down one string so we're going from here to here okay and when i do that i can flick this middle finger off okay so with our E minor it sounds like this let me play it a little bit slower so you can see my chord shape changing all right so if you want to add that into the rest of the pattern it just makes it sound a little bit more detailed so altogether we have like this you I met you in the dark you lit me up you made me feel small I wasn't no we danced a night where we drank too much I felt your hair back when you were throwing up all right so once you guys have your chords memorized you can transition between them you've tackled those different strumming patterns and you've also mastered the picking pattern let's go ahead and put all those elements together so we can play through the whole song as always I will always put up here what strumming pattern or picking pattern I'm using for each section and I will also list all of the chord changes and lyrics and everything in front of you so you'll have everything you need to know to play through this song I am going to try to incorporate a little bit of each part of this tutorial into my cover so feel free if you don't like that too just stick with one strumming pattern or stick with one picking pattern for the entire thing all of the options I've provided for you in this video they all sound great on their own or mix together so let's go ahead and play through the entire song of say you won't let go by James Arthur good luck just say Oh I met you in the dark you lit be you made me feel as though we dancin our way we drink too much I held your hair back when you would throw it up they smiled over your shoulder for man out strong holds over I pulled you closer to my chance I already told ya I think you should get some rest I knew I loved you then but you never know cuz I played it cool when I was I know I needed you but I never show I wanna stay with you - Randall just say you let go I wake you up with some breakfast and then I'll bring you coffee win kiss on your head now take the kids to school wave them goodbye and I'll bake my lucky stones for that night laughter your shoulder permit I forget that I'm the Walden I wanna dance with you right now Oh beautiful as ever I swear every day you'll get better you make me feel this way somehow I'm so in love with you now I hope you know darling you love this morning's way to go we've come so far minds look how we broke now I wanna stay with you into a rain'll say Oh move I want to live with you even when we're ghosts cuz you were always there for me when I needed you most I'm gonna love you too my lungs give out I promise till death we part like in our vows so I wrote this song for you now everybody knows it's just you and me until around old say you home you just say let go all right and that was my tutorial for say you won't let go by James Arthur I really hope that it was able to help you guys even if it was just a little bit if you did like it please make sure to give it a like down below as well as subscribe to my channel if you're interested in learning more guitar songs in the future if you currently are in the mood to still keep on playing some more guitar songs make sure to check out one of my playlists up here the detailed tutorials playlist is going to be songs more like this one where there's picking patterns and it's just a little bit more intricate so that's probably more for like intermediate players or people who like to do finger picking and stuff like that my basic tutorials are just easy songs with probably four chords or less and just really simple strumming patterns that you can probably get really quick and then my team teacher toils are my tips and tricks where I just show you guys techniques about guitar and how to take care of your guitar and things like that and also feel free to follow me on any of my social media sites if you would like to I do a lot of polls and giveaways and I just asked you guys a lot of your opinions on there so any of those are a great place to get in touch with me and just express any concerns you have or any requests that you have for future tutorials and stuff like that so um again thank you so much to Leo for sponsoring this video make sure please to check out his website listed in the description box below if you are interested in buying one of his beautiful Capo's for you or a friend especially now around the holidays it would be a great time to gift those away and there's even a coupon code if you use the coupon code Ellen they will get 15% off your purchase so make sure to check that out if you're interested and I think that concludes my tutorial so thank you guys again so much for watching and I will see you in my next video bye to say go you