(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding Tutorial/Lesson
(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay
G, B7, C, A, E, D, F/C
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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 Sitting on the Dock of the Bay by ois reading on my zeger zad ADC e guitar so if you like what you see I will make sure to leave more information as well as $100 off the link in the description box down below um here is 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 we're going to need to know seven different chord shapes to play through this song and let's go ahead and start with our G major which looks like this and sounds like this and by the way if you don't know how to read these chord charts sing on screen I Do cover how to do that in my free beginner Series right here on YouTube so make sure check that out right here the next chord is our B7 after that we have our C major then there's our a major we also have our E major then there's our D major and then the last chord you need to know is our F over C and those are the only seven chord shapes 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 memorize those chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them because it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier and if this is a skill you're currently struggling with I do have an entire practice with me playlist right here on YouTube where we go through the skill and build it up in real time together so I'll make sure to link that playlist in the corner here for those of you who need it but once you have those chords under your belt then we can go ahead and talk about some strumming patterns that you can use for this song all right guys so as I always say if you are brand new to playing guitar or you're somebody who struggles with playing guitar while singing at the same time the very first thing I would suggest you do is to bring up the song and go ahead and play through the entire thing with a single down Strom as you syn the song and you want to take this time to really get used to what word or what syllable you're on whenever those chords are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look like in the morning sun I'll be sitting when the evening come all right so that's just a quick example but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song and just really make sure you know where those chords are going to be changing and this 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 but after you've taken the time to do that we can go ahead and talk about how we can add to the single strum to make more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so we do have a fairly simple rhythm today to keep this beginner friendly it's going to be in an eighth note count so it'll sound like this we have 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and three and four and down down up up down up down down up up down all right you'll see this in so many songs so it's a really good idea to get used to this strum pattern um but what we're going to do is we're basically going to apply this pattern one time through per chord throughout almost the entire song okay so let's go ahead and take a look at that first verse we're starting here on our G chord you're going to go down down up up down up straight into our B7 down down up up down up into C down down up up down up to a all right so you really want to just practice the motion of getting these strumming you know arrows down but once you've kind of internalized that rhythm a little more you basically want to string all of these chords together so we've got G down up up down up B7 to C to a all right awesome and this uh song isn't super fast so about that speed that we were just going you could play through the song at that Tempo the only place that is going to be a little bit different that I wanted to show you how we're going to change up this strumming rhythm is going to be in the bridge so in the bridge we're going to be changing these cords a little faster so what I mean by that is we're actually going to split this measure in half so I'm going to add a vertical line here in the middle and what this is going to represent is where we want to change chords so essentially we're playing two chords per measure in the bridge okay so with our Bridge you can see we're starting on our G chord and going into our D now the one thing that I am going to change a little bit is I'm going to change the second half of this measure to look like the first half so essentially we're repeating the rhythm of the first half into the second half so now instead of down down up up down up for this bridge we have down down up 1 2 and 3 4 and but remember we're switching chords in the middle there so on the bridge we're starting on our G you would do the left half first so we have down down up switch straight into your D down down up C down down up back to G all right so it's going to move a little bit faster than the rest of the song without stopping it'll look like this we've got g d c g all right so that's the only part part of the song where the strumming is going to be a little bit different and it's just in that bridge then when you get back into the third verse we're going to go straight back into our first strumming pattern so let's go ahead and take a look at how some of this would sound going back to the first verse we're going to use our full strumming pattern measure so we've got down down up up down up Morning Sun I'll be sitting with the even watching the ships fall in then I watch her roll away again now here for the chorus we're going to keep the same strumming rhythm going but the chords are going to change a little bit okay so back on G I'm sitting the E chord watching the time roll away back to me on the Dark of the day wa time all right so you can see in the chorus there we're just keeping that strumming rhythm going one time per chord and then of course like I said the bridge is going to be a little bit different where we want to kind of split the measure up into two chords so we have g d d to g looks like nothing's going to change everything Still Remains the Same I can't do what 10 people tell me to do this is where we have that F of c chord so I guess I'll remain the same all right so just in that last line of the bridge we're going to go back to that full strumming pattern all right but basically you can apply these chords in the strumming Rhythm to the entire song and I think it's sounds really great all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this strumming Rhythm under your belt you want to get it to a point where you can play it without really thinking about it and you're relying more on the muscle memory that you've developed after enough practice so if this is something you're still struggling with I do have a practice with me series on strumming as well and I Do cover this exact strumming Rhythm so I will make sure to link that in the corner if you need that but yeah once you have all of that down then we can go ahead and take everything we've learned in this tutorial with cords and the Transitions and the strumming rhythms and add that all together to play through the song 1 2 ready go morning I'll be sitting in the evening time watching the sh rolling then I'll watch him roll away again Want to Have Fun jamming out to 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 play along guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link for that in the description box down below if you enjoyed 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