Stressed Out by Twenty One Pilots Tutorial/Lesson
Stressed Out
Am, C, Dm, E, Em, G, F
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Video transcript
hi my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play stressed out by twenty one pilots on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn I wish found some better sound this song is super easy to play because there's no cable required to play in the same key as the original song and also there's only one real strumming pattern that you need to know for the entire song as far as the chords go there are a handful of chords but most of them are very basic and easy to memorize and there's only one Barre chord you need to know and I will show you an alternate fingering where you don't have to bar any chords so let's go ahead and get started with learning all of the chords all right so let's go ahead and jump into the chords you need to know there are seven of them so let's go ahead and start with a minor which looks like this and sounds like this okay next let's learn C which looks like this and sounds like this after that we'll jump into D minor which looks like this and sounds like this alright next let's go into E which looks like this and sounds like this after that let's go to E minor all you have to do is take off that first finger and you have a minor which looks like this and sounds like this next let's learn G which looks like this and sounds like this and then I saved our bard chord for last this is going to be F which looks like this and sounds like this and if you're still at the stage where bar chords are a little too hard for you can do the alternate fingering which looks like this and sounds like this just remember if you do this fingering not to play the top and bottom string okay so once you have those chords memorized and you're pretty familiar with them we can move on to the next part of learning this song which is the strumming what is stressed Oh so before we start if you guys are familiar with a lot of my other tutorials you'll know that I tend not to use a pick I just prefer playing songs with my fingers and with my thumb and strumming with my thumb and picking with my fingers but this is a song that I think would sound a lot better if you do use a guitar pick just because it gives that more of the percussive sound whenever you hit at the strings and that will help with the rhythm and everything and it'll tie everything together so if you have a guitar pick I would suggest using it for this song in particular unless you're like me and you just like to play with your fingers all the times and you could do that whatever you want whatever sounds good to you so as you know I always say the best way to get familiar with a song is to go through the entire song and just play one down stroke on each chord change and I'll go ahead and count this as strumming pattern one because I do use it throughout the song so all you're going to do is put on your F chord because that's the first chord in the song and we're just going to play through each chord ones on a Down stroke so I'll give you an example we have I wish I found some better stuff no one's ever heard I wish I had a better boy things and better words I wish I found some chords Oh and obviously it's a little bit boring if you do that for the talking parts that he does in the song so the place I like to use this strumming pattern is the very beginning of the chorus because you can hear the song it kind of slows down there and this is a great place to put this strumming pattern so let me go ahead and give you an example to sleep but now we're stressed out so as you can hear it sounds just like the original song and that's a great place to put this one down stroke strumming pattern but for the rest of the song there's only one other strumming pattern you need to know so here it is it's very simple to learn and once you get the rhythm down it's really fun to play with this song so let me go ahead and take you through it the whole thing is just down down down down up so go and pick your F chord on because that's the first chord in the song it's just yeah and now the secret to this strumming pattern to get the rhythm that you hear in the song is that you want to emphasize the third down stroke so you'll notice that when I start playing it at tempo for the first two down strokes I'm using mostly my wrist action and then for the third one I will strum a little bit harder and use my elbow to give it more of the emphasis of the entire line so we've got down so it's kind of hard to hear the rhythm while we're going at this tempo but once you speed it up you will hear how emphasizing the third down stroke really helps to tie the whole strumming pattern together so why don't you guys put on your f chord and try that with me one more time we've got down down down down down and then once you get the pattern you just have to practice those chord transitions so let's practice going at the beginning from F to D minor to a minor we've got down down down you and then the last little thing you want to do to this strumming pattern is you want to try and add a palm mute so what I'm doing is I'm lightly resting my right hand over the string and so that way when I strum it kind of mutes the strings a little bit so they're not as rainy so if you can practice that and try to put that in it'll make this starting pattern sound even better so go ahead put your F chord back on and this time we're going to play the same pattern but we want to palm mute it at the same time so we've got and you can hear I'm still emphasizing that third down stroke as well and then again you just want to add in those chord transitions so we've got F minor and you can hear whenever we do the down and up stroke at the end the down stroke is still muted but the up stroke is ringing and that kind of when you speed it up gives it a cool vibe which makes it sound a lot like the original so let's go ahead and speed this up a little bit so we can get it at tempo so once you can play that you can play through the whole song because this is the strumming pattern that it's used through the whole song the only difference is I like to palm mute the verses and then when I do the courses I like to let it ring and you'll hear how that makes a big difference in dynamics when we go through the cover at the end and how it'll make it a little bit more interesting as far as the guitar part goes all right so once you have all the chords memorized and you've got that strumming pattern down and you've added in that palm mute if you want to all we have left to do is go through the whole song and play stressed out by twenty one pilots good luck give each other different names we would build a rocket ship many by our way I wish found some better sounds no one's ever heard I wish I had a better voice that sang some better words I wish I found some chords and in order that is new I wish I didn't have to rhyme every time I said I was told when I get older all my fears dream for now I'm insecure I care what people think when a moon ow to we're stressed out Chris dress down sometimes a certain smell will take me back to now I was gone how come I'm never able to identify where it's coming from and make a candle out of it if I ever found to try to sell it never sell out of it I'd probably only sell what maybe to my brother cuz to have the same nose same clothes homegrown a stone's throw from a creek we used to roam but it would remind us of when nothing really mattered out of student loans and treehouse homes we all take the left to the kill to sleep but now we're stressed out build a rocket ship and fly far away used to dream about a stasis and wake up make money when a mother to sleep but now we're stressed out you need to play pretend give each other different names we build a rocket ship and then flying far away dream about us laughing at our face saying wake up we need to be yeah our congratulations you play through the whole song of stressed out by twenty one pilots super simple right there's a handful of chords but most of them were pretty easy to get under your belt I bet so thanks for joining me for this tutorial I hope that you found it helpful if you did find it helpful then please support me by giving a like down below as well as subscribing to my channel so you know every time I upload a new tutorial for you guys if you want to learn some more really easy songs just like this one then go ahead and check out my basic tutorials playlist and if this was a little easy and you're up for a challenge then you can play my detailed tutorials list and that one's a little bit harder the strumming patterns are a little more intense and there's picking and things like that or you can check out my tMT's which are my twenty minute technique videos if you just want to get better at still learning and stuff on the guitar and now before I go I just wanted to talk about a product that I absolutely love and the Creator behind it and just so you know this video is not sponsored in any way I just really believe in the beauty and the quality behind the wooden cables that my friend Leo makes so right now I'm just showing you guys some of the different variety of cables you can get with different kinds of wood but if you shop his Etsy you'll see all the colors and patterns that he offers so anyway the reason I'm adding this into my video is that Leo has a Kickstarter up right now to help him expand his business he makes all of his Capo's by hand in his garage which i think is amazing and you can even get them personally engraved like the one you may have seen me you in my tutorials before that says forever faithful on it and I think that they work just as well as any regular old like plastic store-bought capo but they're even more beautiful so that's what makes them even better so if you believe in this product as much as I do please head over to his Kickstarter page right now and become a backer I've pledged to back him already and any help you could give him would be greatly appreciated and as with posting this video there's only about a week left in his campaign so make sure you check it out as soon as you can and I will put a link in the description box below so thanks again for watching I hope this helped I hope you had fun and I hope to see you in my next video bye to play pretend give each other different names we would build a rocket ship and then fly it far away used to dream about us laughing yeah