Stargazing by Myles Smith Tutorial/Lesson
Stargazing
F/C, C, Am, Gadd4
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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 stargazing by my Smith on the guitar and today I Am featuring my journey instruments of 660 which is one of my really cool collapsible travel guitars it actually does fold in half so that you can take it with you in a backpack anywhere you travel to so if you're interested in like what you see I will definitely link more information about this guitar 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 you only need to know four different chord shapes to play through this entire song and we're going to start with our F over C 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 in my free beginner Series right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out right there the next chord shape is RC major after that we have our a minor and then the last chord shape is our G add four and those are the only four chords 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 these 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 this song Moves so super quickly so you definitely want to make sure you have those transitions under your belt so if that's something you're currently struggling with I do have an entire practice with me chord transitions playlist right here on YouTube and I'll link that in the corner for those of you who need it um but once you have these chords under your belt then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that I would recommend for this song all right guys so like 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 first thing I was just doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and go through the entire thing with a single down strum on every chord change as you sing through the song and you want to take this time to really just get used to what word or what syllable you're on whenever those course are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look like time Stood Still just like a photograph you make me feel like this would last forever all right so that's just a really 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 changing and this actually something to 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 um but once you have that then we can go ahead and add to this simp full down strum to make more of a full strumming pattern that we can use for this song all right guys so for strumming for this song as you can see we're going to be counting it in a 16th note pattern but don't worry it's probably a lot easier than it looks um so let's go ahead and go through the Rhythm first we've got one E and A 2 E and A 3 e and a four E and A one E and A 2 e and a three e and a four E and A down down up down up down down up down up all right so you can also kind of think of this as like two of the same eighth note pattern like strung together but I do think for this particular song it's easier to think about it in the 16th note pattern because it moves so quickly so um basically what we're going to do is we're going to apply this pattern one time per chord throughout the entire song So this song is easy in a sense that the chord order is the same throughout the hardest thing about this song is going to be the speed at which you have to play it to match the original version um but before we speed it up let's goad and kind of apply this pattern through so you can see here at the beginning we're starting on our F over c chord and you would play this whole pattern once so we have down down up down up down down up down up then you move on to your next chord c down down up down up down down up down up a minor G add four all right so pretty simple because that is going to be the strumming pattern throughout but one thing I wanted to go ahead and show you guys now is what we call accents so whenever you accent certain strums when strumming you're basically just giving it a little bit extra emphasis to make it stand out against the rest of the strumming okay so what I want you to do is add accents to the and of the one and the and of the three okay so I'll go ahead and turn those arrows green um but for those basically what you want to do is when you strum those green arrows you want to kind of strum all the strings and give it just a little bit more of a wider motion all right so you can hear how it's louder all right um and you want to do that for the end of the one and the three so we have down down up down up what this is going to do is give you a really good kind of clear rhythm with just the guitar part to kind of Drive the song forward so with that accent in one time through the chord order would go like this all right so you can see on my accented strums I'm just doing a bigger strum and strumming all the strings whereas all the other ones kind of get a smaller motion with you know just kind of the the middle strings um but basically if you can add that accent in it'll really help the guitar part sound a little less muddy especially at the speed that we'll be playing this at and then the other thing I wanted to show you guys is what we call a palm mute so basically for that I'm just taking the side of my hand with my pick in it and as I strum my down strums I'll kind of have my like Palm gently on the bridge of my guitar and so that'll kind of dampen the sound of it all right you can see my upstrs are still ringing but my down strums are dampened now okay so if you add a palm u in as well it can kind of separate between different parts of the song so what I like to do is I will Palm mute the verses and the pre choruses and then I'll let the choruses ring out so let's take a look at that first verse we've got f with a palm mute to C I'm still adding those Accents in okay another advantage to palm muting your guitar is that your vocals can actually stand out a little bit more clearly um so what I would recommend doing like I said is palm muting the verses time Stood Still just like a photograph you made me feel like this would last forever all right you can see there I'm also speeding it up because like I said this song Moves super fast it actually is way faster than I just even played it but if you are new to guitar start out slowly and build up that speed over time um and then when I get to the precourse same thing with the Palm mute and the accents O say you know it when you know it and I know all right and then when you get to the chorus you still want to have those Accents in but we're just going to take the Palm mute out and let the strings ring take my heart don't break it love me to my b all right um so that's how you can play the entire song you can apply this strumming pattern throughout the entire thing there are a certain few places where I would recommend just doing a single down strum to kind of end some of these phrases and I'll have all of that written down on the guide that's on my patreon page um but basically yeah this trimming pattern you can apply for the whole song the hardest thing I think will be speeding it up the full Tempo sounds something more like this all right that's going to take quite a bit of practice to be able to get it that quickly with the core transitions especially if you're a beginner so just give yourself plenty of time and Grace to get that down um but yeah that is my suggestion for strumming all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this strumming pattern under your belt like I said the speed at which you have to play it is probably going to be the hardest part so just start out slowly and build up that speed and that endurance over time um but once you have the strumming Rhythm down and you've got those chord transitions memorized and everything then we can go ahead and put together these things to play through the song one two ready go time Stood Still just like a photograph you made me feel like this would last forever looking in your eyes i' seen my whole life Want to Have Fun Jam me out to the rest of the song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page we can unlock access to this as well as all my other FastTrack and playalong 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