Shape of You by Ed Sheeran Tutorial/Lesson
Shape of You
Bm, Em, G, A
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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 Shape Of You by Ed Sheeran on the guitar huge shout out and thank you goes to Lava music for sponsoring today's video I am going to be featuring their brand new lava me play guitar in this tutorial today so make sure to stay tuned for a little bit more about that later here's a quick overview of everything I'll be covering in this tutorial today and with that being said let's go ahead and get started all right guys so you only need to know four different chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our B minor 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 course right here in YouTube so make sure to check that out the next chord shape is our E minor we also have our G chord and then the last chord shape is our a chord and those are the only four chords you need to know to play this song so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them the great thing about this song is the order that I showed you the chords in is exactly the same order that the chords stay in for the whole song So once you get those transitions down the rest of it becomes so much easier and that's actually the first thing I wanted to talk to you guys about aami play guitar one of their smart features includes the practice app where you can choose the chord shapes you're currently working on and it'll help you practice transitioning between them faster seriously I was impressed with just how many chord shapes they had available to choose from Beyond just your basic open chords and once you select the chords you want to work on and put them in the order of the song you're trying to learn you just start playing and the lava me play will listen to your shapes and let you know when you're nailing the transition it can even generate a report at the end of your practice session to let you know how you're doing over time which is so cool but if you haven't gotten your hands on this guitar yet you can also check out my practice with me Series right here on YouTube where we go through this skill in real time together but once you have those chords memorized and you can transition between them we can go ahead and talk about strumming for this song all right so as I always say if you are a beginner at guitar or you struggle with singing while playing the guitar the first thing I would suggest doing is to bring up the song and play through the whole song with a single downum as you sing through the song and you just take this time to get used to where those chord transitions are going to be as your singing so here's a quick example of what that would look like with the chorus I'm in love the shape of you push and pull like a magnet do though my heart is falling too I'm in love with your body all right so basically you would want to do that for the entire song and just really make sure you know where those chords are going to be switching like what word you're singing and things like that and this is actually something you do right now if you check out my patreon page I do have this entire guide available to download and print out so I'll make sure to leave that link in the description box for you guys um but once you've done that we can talk more about a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so my first suggestion for strumming as you can see is just down up mute down up mute so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk a little bit more about this Rhythm all right guys so even though this is a pretty short strumming Rhythm it is going to be counted with a 16th note pattern so if you don't know what that means or how to count that I would suggest checking out my beginner Series where we go through that um but anyways it's going to sound like this we have one E and A 2 E and A 3 E and A 4 E and A down up mute down up mute super simple on the outside um and it is actually quite simple to play through the song so basically what you want to do is you want to play this pattern through one time for each chord pairing what I mean by chord pairing is I'm going to actually go ahead and put a vertical line in the middle of the strumming pattern and what that's going to represent is where we're going to want to change chords so like I said earlier this whole song follows the chord progression B minor E minor G and then a so what you would want to do with this pattern is you would split B minor and E minor for the first pattern so we have B minor down up mute to E minor down up mute and then same thing with G and a g is down up mute a is down up mute so we have B minor to E minor to G to a the club isn't the best place to find a l so the bar is where I go me and my friends at the table doing shots drinking fast and then we talk slow all right so because the verses are kind of more like you know wrappy and choppy I feel like this strumming pattern really matches that so I would suggest using it for the verses however you could use it for the entire song I actually have a second strumming pattern I want to show you that I like to use for the prees and the courses so let's go ahead and talk about strumming pattern too all right guys so as you can see my second suggestion for strumming for this song is down up up down down up so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk about this Rhythm all right guys so this one is going to be another 16th note Rhythm so it's going to count like this we have one E and A 2 E and A 3 E and A 4 e and a one E and A 2 E and A 3 E and A 4 and up down up up down up up down down up up down up up down down all right so again just like with the first strumming pattern you want to play this pattern one time through for each chord pairing so again we're going to break this strumming pattern right down kind of the middle so after the first down up you see that vertical line again that's going to represent where we're going to change chords so as with strumming pattern one we have B minor down up up to E minor finish it out down up up down down up to G down up up to a finish it out down up up down down up all right so without stopping it sounds like this down up up down up up down down up all right so if you are new to rhythm guitar this 16th not pattern can be a little bit more tricky so just make sure to pause and take the time you need to really understand how to count that um but basically once you get the strumming Rhythm down you can apply that for again the whole song but I specifically like to use it for the pre choruses and the chorus so let's go ahead and look at the chorus and apply this pattern we've got down up up down up up down down up down up up down up up down down up I'm in love the shape of you push and pull like a magnet to though my heart is falling too I'm in love with your body all right so that's how you would apply this pattern for the choruses um for the pre choruses I do like to add an additional thing this is totally optional but what I like to do there is add a palm mute so basically what I'm doing is the hand the hand that I'm using to strum with my pick in it I'm taking the side of my palm here and I'm just gently resting it on the strings near my bridge and when you kind of rest that on there as you strum down you'll hear that it dampens the sound of the strings all right it's a little more Bassy a little more kind of rhythmic so if you apply that down strum pal mute to this pattern it'll sound more like this all right so you can hear how it's not ringing out as much and I think that fits perfectly with the pre choruses as we build into the chorus so let's go ahead and bring up the pre chorus so I can show you what that sounds like so this is again the exact same pattern I'm just adding a p mute to it this time girl you know I want your love your love was handmade for somebody like me come and now follow my lead I may be crazy don't mind me say boy all right so basically again totally optional to add the Palm you but if you can add it in I would suggest doing it for all of the pre choruses as we lead into the chorus where you want to make it you know ring a little bit more kind of build up some of that um suspense for the guitar all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really internalize this strumming Rhythm get it to the point where you can kind of play through it without counting the Rhythm in your head and that'll make it so much easier to sing on top of eventually um but once you have the strumming patterns down I couldn't leave this tutorial without showing you guys some of those iconic kind of Base tab like picking pattern things so let's go ahead and jump into those tabs all right guys so we basically have two different tabs I want to show you for this song and we're going to start with the more like base kind of tab that you'll hear here um so basically what you see on screen is the tab so if you don't know how to read tabs I did make a video on how to read tabs so go ahead and check that out first and then come back but basically my suggestion for fingering is you want to take your middle finger and put that on the second fret of the a string we're going to play that three times then we're going to jump over to our low E string next door and play that open three times again then I like to take my ring finger and put that on the third fret relative to the Capo of the low E string again that goes three times and then you go next door back to that a string and take your middle finger off so it's open and again play that three times all right so hopefully you can hear that base tab coming along so without stopping it goes like this all right super simple and that basically repeats throughout the entire song um the second tab I want to show you is more of that like Melody tab that you'll hear you know it's more prominent when you're listening to these song so basically that tab is what you see on screen here and my suggestions again for fingering is I would take your ring finger and put that on the fourth fret of the G string then take your middle finger and put that on the third fret of the B string next door all right and for most of this tab we're just going to go back and forth between those notes in Rhythm so we have okay and then here when we go kind of that walk down I would use your first finger for the um B string on that second fret and then your ring finger again on the G string and then your first finger again or your pointer finger on that g string all right so you're going a little walk down there so alt together without stopping that tab sounds like this all right and again this tab is just like the base tab it will kind of repeat itself throughout the entire song so if you have somebody you want to play with like one of you guys could do the tab one you guys could do cords and strumming however you want to split that up but this actually the second thing I want to show you that's super cool about the lava me play all right guys so let me show you this really cool feature um it's called loops and so if you go to this kind of Loops app that they have in the lava me play it'll load all sorts of different drum tracks and so you can kind of sort it by like the type of genre of music you want to play so it gives you a little bit of a preview and then I'm going to slow it down so this first little Loop is actually the drum check that I just chose and what I'm going to do is I'm going to play the base tab on top of the drum track and then if you wanted to you could add another track and I'm going to do that with the melody tab that I just showed you guys and then there you have it you can tell it's going to Loop over and over again and you could use this to practice your cords on top of it so yeah the loops app has definitely been one of my favorite things to play around with on the lava me play and I am going to actually use that little Loop that I just created to play through my playong here so let's go ahead and put everything we learned together to play through the song the club isn't the best place to find a lover so the bar is where I go me and my friends at the table doing shots drinking fast and we talk slow come over and start up a conversation with just me and trust me I'll give it a chance now take my head on the and then we dance now I'm sing Want to Have Fun jamming through the rest of the song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page where you can unlock access to this as well as all my other FasTrack and playong guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below if you enjoy learning this song with me then you should definitely check out this video not only does it have a super similar Vibe and feel but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye