Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole Tutorial/Lesson
Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World
C, Em, Am, F/C, G, Am7, E7, Dm
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Video transcript
hey everyone my name is Ellen and today let's learn how to play somewhere over the rainbow slash What a Wonderful World by Israel kamakaviva Ole 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 alright guys so we only have eight chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our C major 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 make sure to check out my free beginner course right here the next chord is our E minor chord after that we have our a minor chord next is our F over c chord after that we have our G major chord we have our a minor 7 chord we have our E7 chord and then the last chord you need to know is your D minor chord and those are the eight chord shapes to play through this song all right guys so go ahead and take some time to pause the video and just memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them it'll make learning through the rest of the song so much easier for you and if practicing those transitions is something that you're struggling with right now I would recommend checking out my practice with me Series where we walk through this skill together but once you've done that we can go ahead and talk about the strumming pattern now the first thing I would recommend doing is going through the entire song and singing through it with a single down strum for every chord change and this is really going to help you get familiar with the song and know where those chord transitions are going to happen so here's a quick example of what that would look like Somewhere Over the Rainbow way up high all right so you basically want to do that single down strum for every corn change for the rest of the song and just get used to where those are going to be happening this is something you can actually do right now so if you're interested in downloading a printable guitar guide with everything I'm teaching in this tutorial today make sure to check out my patreon page I'll make sure to leave a link in the description box down below okay so the full strumming pattern as you can see is down down up up down up so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk about the Rhythm all right guys so we are going to be counting this strumming pattern in an eighth note rhythm today if you don't know what that means or don't know how to count that make sure to check out my free beginner course because we do cover that but basically it's going to sound like this we've got one two three four one two and four and one two and four and down down up up down up down down up down up most of them but in other parts of the song you're only going to do the pattern one time per chord but for most of it it is repeated twice foreign so let's quickly go over where we're going to play this pattern through once for each chord and versus where we're going to repeat it twice so basically for the beginning of the intro in verse two and in the outro we are only going to play this pattern through one time for each chord but for the rest of the song so the end of the intro verse 1 verse 3 and all of the choruses we are going to repeat this strumming pattern two times per chord so just keep that in mind as we go through the song but the good thing is this strumming pattern can be applied and used throughout the entire song So once you get that Rhythm down the rest of it should come pretty easily alright guys so if you need to definitely pause the video and just take a few minutes to memorize this strumming pattern and really just internalize how it feels to play the more you can kind of just play it without rigidly counting out each beat the easier it'll be to add in some singing on top of that so definitely pause and just take as much time as you need to get that internalized but once you do we can go ahead and play through the song on one two three four one two ready go foreign playing through the rest of this 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