Story of My Life by One Direction Tutorial/Lesson
Story of My Life
D, G, Bm, A, Em
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Video transcript
Hi, my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Story of My Life by One Direction. So stay tuned if this is something that you'd like to learn. So, to play this song in the same key that the boys sing it in, you will need a capo on the first fret. And you also need to know five different chords. One of them is a bar chord. But, uh, no worries if you are unfamiliar with bar chords and have trouble playing them. I have a tutorial right here that takes you step by step on ways to improve playing your bar chords. But without further ado, I will go ahead and show you the five chords that you need to know. feel about us. So, the first chord you're going to need to know is D, which looks like this, and sounds like this. And remember the X's mean not to play that string. So for D chord, you're not going to be playing these top two strings. Okay. From there, we need to know G, which looks like this. And sounds like this. Okay, after that you need to know B minor, which is a bard chord. It looks like this. And it sounds like this. After that we need to know a which looks like this and sounds like this. And then the very last one you need to know is E minor, which looks like this. And sounds like this. So, why don't you go ahead and practice those chords a couple of times until you have them memorized and your fingers feel comfortable playing them and you can transition between them and then um we'll go ahead and jump into some strumming patterns that you can So, let's start out our strumming patterns by kind of doing a warmup and starting with the very simplest thing you can do, which is playing every note one time with a down stroke. And this is really good for just getting familiar with where the chord transitions and chord changes are. So, um, I'll go ahead and show you an example of what that would sound like with the chorus. The story of my life. I take her home. I drive all night to keep her warm. And is froen. Once you do that throughout the entire song and you're familiar with where things change and things like that, then go ahead and we can bump it up a notch and do a more difficult strumming pattern, which is this one right here. So, the way we play this is down, up, up, up. And we're going to play it on kind of like an offbeat. So, go ahead and put your D chord down. And we're going to play this downstroke up downstroke up. down, up, up, up, down, up, up, up. And this will transition really nicely into the next strumming pattern that I have to show you. But first, let's go through this pattern and um practice some of those transitions. So on D, you're going to play it twice. Down, up, up, up, Then change to G. down, up, up, up, down, up, up, up. Then for these next two chords, you're only going to play this pattern through once. So for B minor, it's down, up, up, up, G, up, up, up, and then D plays twice again. Down, up, up, up, down, up, up, So let's go ahead and play through the chorus with this strumming pattern and see what that sounds like. The story of my life. I take her home. I drive all night to keep her warm and time is frozen. It's very similar to the first one, but all of those upstrokes that we're adding into it, it kind of gives it more um body so that it's not just so plain the entire time. The third strumming pattern I have to show you guys is this one right here. It's kind of an intermediate between the really easy ones and the somewhat harder one that I'm about to show you. But the way you play this is down up down up down up So between these first two downs, you're going to have a little bit of a pause. Down up down up down up down up down up. down, down, up, up, down, up, down, up, up, down, up. So again, for this pattern, you're going to play it twice through for every chord, except for when you get to the chorus and it changes from G to B minor, like kind of fast, then you're only going to play it once. So, let's go ahead and go through that so I can show you what I mean. For the chorus, you're going to play the strumming pattern through twice for D. Down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up. Then for G, you're going to play it twice again. Down, down, up, up, down, down, up, up, down, up. But now for B minor, you're only going to play it once. Down, down, up, up, down, up. Switch back to G. Down, down, up, down, up. And then for the last D, you're going to play it twice again. Down, down, up, up, down, up, down, up, up, down. So, why don't we go ahead and do that for the chorus and see what that sounds like. The story of my life. I take her home. I drive all night to keep her warm and tight. Is frozen. Now, this last strumming pattern I have to show you is probably the most difficult. Um, but once you get it down, it actually probably will come pretty naturally. Hopefully, it did for me. So, I'll go ahead and show you the pattern right now. And it's kind of long and it's hard to pick up the rhythm unless we split it up in this way. So, what I've done now is I've kind of shown you whenever there's a space between the letters, that's where you need to kind of let it ring a little bit longer. So, let me go ahead and show you an example of what this strumming pattern sounds like. Down, up, up, down, up, up, down, down, up, down, up, up, down, up, up, down, up, down, up, up, down, up, up, down, down, up. So, you can kind of hear more of a rhythm now. So, again, the strumming pattern is going to be the same as the other ones that I showed you. For the chorus, you're going to play through this pattern twice for each chord except for the B minor and G where it goes faster. So, let's go ahead and go through the chorus and see what that sounds like. The story of my life. I take her home. I drive all night to keep her warm and tight. It's frozen. If you can handle it, I would suggest practicing this pattern because I think that it sounds really accurate to the song. Especially when you speed it up, it'll sound just like how the original recording sounds. The story of life. I take her home. I drive all night to keep her warm and tight. It's frozen. because throughout the song it's very ringy and echoey. So if you do this strumming pattern, it kind of fills up all of that empty space and it sounds really good. So hopefully you guys can practice this strumming pattern through and play it for the entire song. Now I'm going to share with you guys a little secret that has been really helpful for me for the past couple years. Um the D chord is really easy to manipulate and make sound different. So, if you guys go ahead and put your D chord on, if you play it regularly, just sounds like a regular D chord, but um if you put your pinky on to the third fret next to your ring finger on the top E string, it kind of changes the sound and that's a D suspended chord. Or if you go back to your regular D and you take off your first finger, it makes another chord. Or you can put your D back on and take off your middle finger and it makes another chord. And the cool thing about this song is that whenever you play D, you can lift off one of your fingers or place on your pinky and it'll completely change the sound of the song and it'll give it a little bit more interest as far as the guitar part goes. So what I like to do for this song is at the beginning I give my D chord a little more interest halfway through when I'm playing it. So if I start at the beginning, we have B minor and then we switch to D. But a cool thing you can do is the second time you're playing the strumming pattern through for D, go ahead and take off one of your fingers or put on your fourth finger and see how that sounds. four or so. I think that sounds really cool and it'll give it more interest when you play your guitar and it's super easy to do. So, um just a suggestion if you guys want to play around with that. Um, D is really easy to manipulate and it sounds really cool when you do it. Story of my life. So, I know a lot of you guys are probably wondering what the picking pattern is because strumming sounds great, but of course, we can hear in the original song that there's a lot of picking going on as far as the guitar part goes. So, I'll go ahead and teach you a variation of a picking pattern. It's not exactly the same as what you hear in the song, but it's more of a simplified version. So hopefully you guys can pick it up pretty quickly and you can perform this song. So for the picking pattern I have to show you, go ahead and put your B minor chord on. And the way we're going to play this is for each chord in this song, we're going to play the bottom string with our thumb. So in B minor, our bottom string is our fifth string. Okay? Then you're going to take your pointer finger and we're going to play the third string with that. Your middle finger will play the second string and your ring finger will play the top string, the E string. And now what we're going to do is we're going to go in a kind of back and forth pattern throughout for every chord. So let's first practice with B minor. We're going to split this up into groups of four. So for the first four notes, we're going to play the fifth string, the third, the second, and then back to the third. So al together that sounds like this. For the second group of four notes, we're going to play pretty much the same pattern, except this time the first note we're going to play is our top E string with our ring finger. So instead of 5 3 2 3, now we're going to play 1 3 2 3. Now when you put these two groups of four together, it'll sound like this. 5 3 2 3 1 3 2 3 5 3 2 3 1 3 2 3. The great thing about this picking pattern is that it's going to stay the same throughout the entire song. So now we can go to our D chord. And in every chord in this song that we play, these three fingers are going to stay the same on the third, second, and first string. The only thing that's ever going to change is your thumb. And your thumb is always going to play the lowest note in the chord. So in B minor, the lowest note was the fifth. In D, the lowest note is the fourth. And now the pattern will still say the same except for the first note. So 4 3 2 3 1 3 2 3 4 3 2 3 1 3 2 3. So now let's go ahead and switch from B minor into the D chord. And you'll notice how helpful it is to have the same pattern for both chords. So B twice D twice. So now for the rest of the song you can play the exact same pattern. So in the verse it goes from B minor to D and then eventually we go from B minor to G. So when it switches chords from B minor to G, you only have time to do one pattern. So we have B minor twice, D, B minor, D From this point on, we're only going to play the pattern through once for each of these chords. So, B minor, G, D twice. B minor, G, D. And you can keep the same exact picking pattern throughout the entire song. The only time this is going to change is going to be during the precourse. And I'll be gone, gone tonight. For this part, you don't have enough time to do the pattern through all the way. So, what we're going to do here is we're just going to play the first half of the pattern, the one with the bottom note, which in this case is six. And then 3 2 3 G. Then you'll immediately switch to A and we'll go 5 3 2 3. And then you'll immediately switch to B minor. 5 3 2 3. And here it goes on twice. So we can add in the rest of the pattern. 1 3 2 3. So let's just play through the pre chorus so you know what that sounds like. G A B minor. G A B minor. G A B minor. A And then we get to the chorus. So let's go ahead and see what an example of this sounds like with the chorus. The story of my life. I take her home. I drive all night to keep her warm and time is frozen. Now, similarly to what I told you earlier with the strumming patterns and the cool unique feature of D where you can add a bunch of fingers and it makes it change sounds. Um, I like to do that also with picking. So let's go ahead and go to the beginning when we start with B minor. When you pick the beginning and then you switch to D, this is another place where you can add your pinky or take off your middle finger or take off your first finger and kind of give that D chord a little bit of variation. So I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. So, what I'm doing there is I'm adding a little bit of a descending scale. And it sounds kind of similar to how you hear the boys play it at the beginning. So, if you put on your D chord, I'll go ahead and show you how I'm doing that. When I'm playing through the pattern 4 3 2 3 1 3 2 3. What I'm doing is the second time I play through that pattern, I'm going to take off my first finger. So, we go from D and then we take off our first finger and then we put it back on. So, let's try that again. Put your D chord on just like normal. And we play 4 3 2 3 1 3 2 3. Then take off your first finger. Play 4 3 2 3. And then put your first finger back on. 4 3 2 3. And this sounds really similar to how you hear it at the beginning when you start to speed things up. Another way you can add variation is by adding your pinky. So 4 3 2 3 1 3 2 3. Then add your pinky. 4 3 2 3 1 3 2 3. And of course you can also take off your middle finger. So if you go from your regular D, you can take off your middle finger. And these are all ways you can add a little bit more variation into your song. And it's not really that hard to do. So go ahead and give you an example of what all of those sound like. So you can see just by changing your fingerings around on the D chord, it sounds a lot cooler when you try to add a little bit of variation. and I'll be gone tonight. The fire beneath my feet. So, now that I've taken you guys through the different chords you need to know, the strumming patterns as well as picking patterns, let's go ahead and put all of those elements together and play through the entire song. I will go a little bit slower than the actual song goes, just so we can all keep up. And um just keep in mind that it's always okay to change up the strumming patterns and picking patterns. You can combine them with each other and play different ones for different parts of the song. And of course, you can always just play whatever feels most comfortable to you. But um yeah, so here we go. This is Story of My Life by One Direction. And yeah, good luck. In these walls are the stories that I can't explain. Leave my heart open. Stays right here empty for days. She told me in the morning she feel the same about us in her clothes. Seems to me that when I die, these words are written in my stone. And I'll be gone, gone tonight. The ground beneath my feet is open wide. The way that I've been holding on to tight with nothing in between. The story of a life. I take her home. I drive all night to keep her warm and tight. It's frozen. The story of my life. I give her hope. I spend her love until she's broken inside. The story of my life. Written in these walls are the colors that I can change. Leave my heart open. My stays right here in it cage. I know that in the morning I'll see us in the light upon me. Although I am broken, my heart is like tears and I'll be gone, gone tonight. The fire beneath my feet is burning bright. The way that I've been holding on to tight with nothing in between. The story of my life. I take her home. I drive all night to keep her warm in time. It's frozen. The story of my life. I give her hope. I spend her love until she's broken inside. The story of my life. And I've been waiting for this time to come around. But baby, running after you is like chasing the clouds. The story of my life. I take her home. I drive all night to keep her warm and tight. Is frozen. The story of my life. I give her hope. I spend her love until she's broken inside. The story of my life. Story of my life. So, that was my tutorial. I really hope that you guys liked it. Um, don't forget to please like it down below and also leave a comment and subscribe if you're not already for more tutorials in the future just like this one. And of course, this wouldn't be a complete tutorial unless I did a giveaway. So, this time I have a blue capo to give to one of you guys. I've signed it Forever Faithful. And um yeah, I will give this to you as well as this bright pink guitar strap for those of you who like to play standing up and want proper position and stuff like that. And of course, also after I send you these things, if you take a picture of it and send it to me on my Instagram or my Twitter or my Facebook, then I'll get in contact with you over YouTube and we can discuss doing a Skype lesson, a private one-on-one Skype lesson where I can teach you any song that you want to learn. Along those lines, please make sure to follow me on my various social media sites. Um, I have a Twitter, which is a really quick way to get in touch with me and ask any questions or do requests. I usually check that every day. So, I will respond to you as soon as I see it. And um if you are not a Twitter person and you have a Facebook, then make sure to like my Facebook page. This is where I don't check it as often, but I do put a lot of polls and things like that on here. And so, you guys will be the first to know about any new ideas I have or any songs that I want to do. And I usually go to my Facebook for the most feedback. And then, of course, there's my Instagram. And this is more just like my personal daily life if you guys want to follow me. But I also do a lot of Instagram giveaways on there. Um I'm nearing my next giveaway. So make sure to follow me now so you know when that's going to be. I'll post like a question or something. And then of course also make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you are looking forward to more tutorials such as this, my TMT tutorials where I give you more like technique videos. And I'm starting a new Google+ live tutorial session series where you guys can do live tutorial sessions with me. And um hopefully that will all work out. So yeah, thanks again so much for watching. I really hope that this helped you guys and I will see you next time. Bye. Story of my life.