State of Grace by Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
State of Grace
D, G, Em
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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 state of grace by Taylor Swift on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn this song is gonna be perfect for beginners out there there's only three chords for the entire song none of them are Barre chords and all of them are pretty basic fingerings so they're not very hard to play on top of that we have no capo in order to play this in the same key as Taylor I am going to be showing you guys the acoustic version though so this is the version you can see her playing in a lot of her concert footage so that's why it's gonna be so great to play it's so easy for beginners and talking about beginners I also wanted to just take a moment and let you guys know that I will be playing this tutorial through with my brand-new strong wind guitar strong wood company reached out to me and offered me this free guitar so that I could use it in a tutorial kind of give my opinion on it and things like that so far I think that it's a great option for beginners especially those of you who think you might want to do guitar but you're not like entirely sure this is a great option because it's very affordable and comes with everything you need but I will get into a little bit more about the guitar at the end of the video so let's go ahead and get into the tutorial okay so like I said there's only three chords to play the entire song so let's go ahead and get a closer look at how to play those kittenbum still alright so like I said this song only has three chords for the entire thing the first one you want to learn is D which looks like this and sounds like this the second core do you want to know is G which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you want to know is a minor which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the only three chords you need to know for this song alright so once you have those three chords memorized and you can transition between them let's go ahead and jump into some of the strumming patterns that you can use for this song so those of you who have watched my other tutorials before know what I'm gonna start with I always suggest if you're a beginner and you're playing a brand new song to just go through the song once or twice and just play every chord change with a Down strum just a single down strum and kind of sing through the song with yourself that way you know which word you'll be doing your transitions on and things like that so let's go ahead and go through an example of what that would sound like you can go ahead and put your D chord on cuz that's the first chord of this song we're just gonna strum it down once then we have our G chord and then your strum that down one super simple we're just starting out easy I'm walking fast through the traffic lights busy streets and busy lives and all we know it's touch-and-go we are alone with our changing minds we fall in love till it hurts or bleeds or fades in time so you're gonna want to go ahead and take that through for the rest of the song if you feel like you need to if you do know it pretty well then let's go ahead and jump into our second strumming pattern okay so the second strumming pattern I have to show you is all down strums it's going to be eight down strums and that's the whole pattern so go ahead and put your D chord on since we're starting with that chord we're just going to strum down eight times one two three four five six eight that's the whole pattern so again that's one two three four five six seven eight now I like to use this pattern during all of the verses but one thing that I like to do to kind of dress it up a little bit is I like to emphasize the first and the fourth and the Seven beats or the first fourth and seventh down strums and what that's going to do is just give you a little bit more rhythm so go ahead and put your D chord back on we're going to show a little bit louder the first fourth and seventh beats so we've got one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight so of course once you get those accents down on the first fourth and seven beats then just practice speeding it up little by little and so you can play that tempo so let's go ahead and speed it up to tempo put your D chord on we've got one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight G four five six seven eight I can fast through the traffic lights this is Jean we touch we are alone without changing minds we fall in love and that's the whole first or that's the whole second strumming pattern once you get that one down I just have one more to show you and it'll be great so you can kind of transition between the different strumming patterns when you do your cover so it'll be a little bit more interesting as far as the guitar goes alright so let's go ahead and take a look at our third strumming pattern here it is it kind of looks very long but it's very rhythmic so it's really easy to pick up on what it is it's just gonna be down down up up down up up down up but the good news is you're going to be playing the same chord for this whole pattern so it's gonna come a little bit easier I think let's go ahead and put our D chord on and go through this pattern once we've got down down up up down up and you can see what I'm doing between all of those sections right there when it goes up and then you do another up strum right after I'm just going to circle my hand back around to the bottom of my sound hole here and that'll just help me get back into that up motion for the next group I hope that makes sense so let's go ahead and do that again if your D chord is on we have down down up down up up down up up down up and then of course all you have to do after that is speed it up to tempo so let's go ahead and pick up the pace a little bit with our D chord on we've got down down up up down up up down up up down up down Angie up down back to Dean twice mataji down up down up up down all right so once you have those chords memorized and you can do all of these strumming patterns then we were pretty much ready to put together all of those elements and play through the whole song again I'm going to be putting what strumming pattern I'm using in this corner as well as putting all of the lyrics and quarter changes and everything on screen in front of you that way you guys can all play along so yeah without any further ado let's go ahead and play through state of grace by Taylor Swift goodbye I'm walking fast through the traffic lights busy streets and busy eyes and all we touch and go we are loved without changing minds we fall in love till it hurts or bleeds or faith in time you can you come around in the armored falls piece the room like a kitten ball now all we know it's don't go we are alone just you and me up in your room in our slates are clean just twin fire sign for blue eyes my broken heart this Raven these it raise the sizzle would Wow fine love is ruthless game unless you play good these are the hands of fate I never can this is the worthwhile fight love is a ruthless game unless you play good and right so that was my tutorial for state of grace by Taylor Swift I hope you guys liked it please make sure to give it a like down below as well as subscribe to my channel that way you guys know every single time I upload a new video thanks again so much to strong when guitar company for sending me over a guitar to play on I do think that it's a pretty good guitar for beginners' i think that it's gonna be really great for those of you who want to dabble in guitar but you're not a hundred percent sure if it's something you want to pursue in the long term it was only a hundred dollars and it comes with the guitar itself an extra set of strings picks a guitar capo a guitar tuner and a guitar case so that's all included in that hundred dollars and so I think it's a really great deal for anyone who's looking to just start off on guitar and are looking for a good beginner guitar I think strong wind does a really good job of holding its own I think you've probably heard that there is a little bit of buzzing with the guitar that I was playing on but I think that that's something you could definitely fix by changing out the strings to a little bit of a higher quality string but other than that I thought it was a pretty decent guitar to start learning on so I will link their website and the description box down below if that's something that you want to check out and see what other guitar packages they're selling and things like that but without further ado thank you for watching my tutorial here are my social media sites if you want to follow me on any of those that you can get a shout out like this person right here and I will you guys in my next video thanks again so much for watching right love is a ruthless game unless you play good and right