Something in the Way by Nirvana Tutorial/Lesson
Something in the Way
F5, Db5
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Video transcript
hey my name is Ellen and today let's learn how to play the live version of Something in the way by Nirvana on the guitar 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 so before we jump into the chords I wanted to talk a little bit about the tuning of your guitar I promise that's probably one of the hardest things about learning this song is just making sure that the tuning of your guitar is in the correct tuning before you begin learning it so basically you want your guitar to be in a half step down tuning with a drop d tuning so when all is said and done your guitar string should be d flat a flat d-flat g flat B flat and E flat alright if you don't know how to do either of those tunings I did make a quick video of how to tune your guitar a half step down the easiest way to do that so I'll link that right here and then basically once it's a half step down all you want to do is take your low E string and make sure it's a d flat instead of an E flat so you want to tune it one whole step down so the way you can do that by ear is you know your third string from the top here is a d flat or it should be after you do a half step down so if you have a good enough ear you can just make sure your low E string also matches but it's just an octave lower all right so can you tell that those are the same note all right if you can't do it by ear then just you can also find um the Google guitar tuners online or if you have like a chromatic clip-on tuner that tells you what note you're playing you can just look for a d flat as well but basically once your guitar is in half step down and drop d tuning then we can go ahead and talk about the chords all right guys so you only need to know two different chord shapes to play through this song and the first one is going to be our F5 which I would recommend playing like this and it'll sound like this oh and then make sure that you're not playing those bottom three strings and then the other chord you need to know is our d flat five chord which I would recommend playing like this and it's going to sound like this and really quick I wanted to take an extra few minutes on the chord section just to show you guys how you can mute those strings so on our F5 chord I would recommend using your middle ring and pinky finger because when you're playing through it you don't want to you know sound those bottom three strings so what I like to do is mute them by kind of laying my fingers a little more flat and so when they're flat like that you're going to actually be muting the bottom string so you can hear there that they're not actually making any tones but the top three will still be sounded do you see how the bottom three are muted because I'm using basically my pinky ring and middle finger they're all barely touching those bottom three strings at some point on my finger and that's what's muting or you know causing that muting so the reason we want to mute those bottom three like that is so that when we're strumming you don't have to concentrate so much on just strumming the top three strings you can actually just strum all of them and make sure because you're muting the bottom three it won't sound anyway foreign so I'm actually strumming all six strings there but you can only hear the bottom three right and then the same thing with that d flat five the reason I like to use my pointer finger there is because if you use that you can actually use the rest of your pointer finger like this part of it to mute the bottom two strings in the same way by barely touching them and it'll mute them like that so you can still strum all the strings and then the bottom two are muted so when you strum it you won't actually hear those strings and another reason why I like to make sure that I fret these chords this way is because when I go through the chorus and I'm strumming with both of these chords I'll actually just keep my pointer finger down for that d flat five and then just use my other three fingers to reach across to do the F5 so it's just a really easy transition that way but of course if you know that's an uncomfortable stretch for you you could always just you know do them separately like that I do find that to be a little bit more time consuming so if you can make that stretch I think it's an easier way to you know fret these two chords but anyways the important thing is to make sure that these three notes are covered for your F5 and that these four notes are covered for your d flat five so before we move on just pause the video and make sure that you have these chord shapes memorized that you can transition back and forth between them the beautiful thing about this song is that it is only these two chords so once you can transition between them pretty easily then the rest of it should be pretty cake so once you have those cords memorized let's go ahead and talk about the strumming pattern alright guys so the strumming for this song is fairly basic so I'm going to go ahead and show you a really basic way to do this strumming pattern but I am also going to give you two options of you know different ways you can add into this basic pattern to kind of dress it up a little bit as well so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk about the strumming Rhythm all right guys so we are going to count this strumming pattern in an eighth note Rhythm so if you don't know what that means or how to count that make sure to check out my free beginner course because we do cover that there but basically this pattern is going to sound like this we have one three four and one three four and down down down up all right that's the most simple way you can play this and what you would want to do is play this pattern one time through per chord so you want to do it one time on your F5 down down down up then you would switch over to your d flat five down up all right and you just go back and forth between the two one time through the strumming pattern for each chord all right you could also use it for the chorus foreign all right so you could apply this strumming pattern for the whole song and it would sound pretty great but let's go ahead and talk about the first moderation to the strumming pattern that's not that much harder I'm going to add an extra up strum after the third beat and so that makes this pattern now sound more like this one three and four and one three and four and down down up down up down down up and again you would just apply this one time through for each chord so on our F5 we have down up to d flat five down down up down up back and forth just like earlier and you could use this for the whole song Just repeat it back and forth between these two chords and it sounds good with the verses and the choruses so let me go ahead and show you both all right and then in the chorus oh foreign and then the last little moderation you can do here is I'm going to add another up strum this time before that third beat so now we have down up down up down up okay so the rhythm is going to sound like this one and three and four and one and three and four and down up down up down up down up again one time through for each chord and you could play through the whole song F5 a flat five back and forth just like this for the whole song for the chorus as well oh all right so all of these strumming patterns are just really basic ways that you could strum through this song if you watch him perform it live he does kind of change it up as he's playing so if you like all three of these you could definitely incorporate you know different strummings so you know just whatever you're you're feeling as long as it's got that kind of eighth note Rhythm to it you could add in as many down or up strums as you wanted as long as you're following that eighth note Rhythm so really feel free with the strumming 2 experiment but these are three basic ways that you could strum through this whole song however I would recommend that the strumming be used in the chorus the way he played it live for the verses he does more of like a picking like tab so let's go ahead and talk a little bit about that and really quick before we jump into the rest of the video I wanted to take a second to just kind of sponsor myself you know if you are enjoying this video please make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well subscribe to my channel and if you are struggling with anything that I've taught in this tutorial or any of the other hundreds of tutorials I have on my channel you can all check out my patreon page where you can send me videos of whatever you're practicing ask me any questions that you have and I will send you a video response back that's just one of the perks that I offer through my patreon page so I will link everything down below in the description box as well as in this iPod so if you're interested it's a great way to support my channel so that I can continue making videos like this one while also getting a lot of perks for helping you learn your guitar faster so I hope you'll check that out and um yeah let's go ahead and talk a little bit about that picking all right so if you're new to picking individual strings when you're playing guitar this is the perfect song to start with because it's so super simple so let's go ahead and zoom in so I can show you this tab alright so first of all if you don't know how to read guitar tabs I did make a pretty fun video right here so I'll make sure to link that so watch that first until you get the basics of how to read tabs but after you do that we can go ahead and talk about this one it's super simple all you want to do is I like to use my middle and my ring finger on my low E and A String okay on the fourth fret here for both and all you want to do is go alternate back and forth we're going to pick our low string and then our a string all right so you're going to go if you're at all familiar with this song this you know should sound pretty familiar that's the whole F5 you know picking Tab and then all you want to do now is take those fingers off and then you're going to have open strings okay and then it's the same pattern all right so even though I'm calling these the E and the a string we all know that it's the d flat and the a flat string okay but basically I like to use these two fingers you could use these two you could you know bar it if you wanted to whatever you feel comfortable with I like to do this so we have and then let go and then you just do that back and forth alternating those chords for the entire song so we have F5 d flat five F5 B flat five and it's as simple as that now for my right hand with my pick I am picking each of these strings down like with a down pick if you think it's easier you could also do a down pick and then an up pick on that a flat string okay down up down or you could do down down down I find it easier that way but you know experiment with you know your guitar and how you feel comfortable playing it but that is the entire picking Tab and you can do that for all of the verses so this is what it sounds like all together underneath the bridge okay to eat fish cause they don't have any feelings all right and then right there is when I would go back into that strumming pattern for the chorus something in the way all right and you could basically just finish out the song with the strumming through the chorus but yeah that's the easiest way that I found to play this song I think if you are a newbie to guitar you could totally tackle this once you have that tuning of your guitar in place so once you get the picking and that strumming down then we can play through the song one two ready go underneath the bridge and I 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 Fast Track and play along guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link 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 really similar Vibe but it's also just as easy to play so I'll see you over there bye