Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams Tutorial/Lesson
Summer of '69
D, A, Bm, G, F, Bb, C
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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 Summer of 69 by Brian Adams as voted on by my patrons on my patreon page as this month's Patron picks so if you want a little bit of voting power and the songs you see me Teach around my channel make sure to check it out I will link it down below 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 all right guys so you only need to know seven different chords to play through this song and we're going to start start with our D 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 I Do cover how to do that my pre- beginner Series right here on YouTube so make sure check that out right there the next chord is our a major then we have our B minor after that is our G major and then for our chord change in the middle of the song we've got our F chord there's also our B flat and our C major and those are the only seven chords you need to know to play through this song all right guys 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 cuz it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you and if this is a skill you're currently struggling with I do have a practice with me playlist right here on YouTube where we go through the skill in real time and build it up together so if that's something you think you would find helpful I will make sure to link it in the corner here 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 as always if you are brand new to playing guitar or you're somebody who struggles with with playing guitar while singing at the same time the first thing I would suggest doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and play through the entire thing with a single down strum on each 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 chords are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look like I got my first real six string bought it at the five and time played it till my fingers bled it was a Summer of 69 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 cords are going to be changing and this actually something you 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 for you um but once you've done this and you're used to where those chords are going to be changing then we can go ahead and add to this single down strum to make more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so basically I have two different strumming patterns to show you that will both work for this song and I'm going to go ahead and start with the one that I think sounds a little bit more accurate which as you can see at the top of the screen is just all down strums so we're going to count this in an eighth note Rhythm so it's just going to sound like this we have 1 and 2 and three and four and 1 and two and three and four and 1 and two and three and four and down down down down down down down down all right so all down strums fairly simple and what we're going to do is we're going to apply this pattern to times per chord and so um one thing I want to kind of mention before we move on is if you listen to the song you can definitely hear there are some Accents in there so what I would recommend doing is accenting the first beat and the and of the two so I'll go ahead and turn those arrows green that just means we're going to Accent them and what I'm doing there is let's say for instance on my D chord what I'm going to do for the accented chords is I'm going to strum the entire chord so all four strings on D and then for the purple non accented beats I'm just going to kind of focus more on the top strings okay so we have 1 and 2 and three and four and all right so you just want to make them a little bit louder a little more Punchy than the other down strums around it um but basically and that's totally optional but I do think it helps kind of keep the rhythm going so if you add those Accents in like I said we want to play this pattern through two times per chord so looking at verse one we're starting on our D we have 1 and 2 and three and four and twice to a back to D twice back to a twice all right so the strumming pattern is pretty simple but this song does move pretty quickly so we do actually need to speed this up a little and one thing that I do think can help with the speed up of this pattern also is to add another optional thing which we're going to call a palom mute and what I'm doing there is I'm just taking the side of my hand that has my pick in it and as I'm strumming down I'm gently kind of resting the side of my palm on the guitar strings just near the bridge of the guitar and as you do that you'll hear that it kind of dampens the sound of the strings like they just don't ring out as much but you still should be able to hear like the notes okay but anyways if you apply this Palm mute this can also help you strum a little bit faster because you're not really lifting the side of your hand off of the strings you're kind of like anchoring them there and if you add the Accents in it really does sound a lot like the original so we have 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and four and all right so if you can try it out out a palm Ute just like rest that near your Bridge um and we would apply this for the entire verse so let's go ahead and play through it a little we've got D accents and P mutes to a twice for this string pattern I got my first real six string B it at the five and time play waited till my fingers bled it was the summer of 69 all right and I am using an electric guitar today but if you're on acoustic this is the exact same stuff you still want to apply the pal you and add the Accents in and if you wanted to you could apply this pattern for the entire song so let's go ahead and take a look at that course um the only thing that's going to be a little different here is you only want to play this pattern one time per cord instead of twice and also if you are going to do a palm mute I would go ahead and recommend taking it off let it ring out a little bit more so on our B minor chord we've got down down down down down down to a to d g oh when I look back now the summer seem to last forever all right and so like I said this all down strm pattern can be applied for the entire song and you would just kind of play it like that um but going on and moving to the second strumming option if you find that all these down strums is a little difficult or you can't keep up or do it at Tempo this one might be a little easier so um again we're in an eighth note count and it's just going to sound like this we have one and two and three and four and 1 and 2 and three and four and 1 and 2 and three and four and down down up up down up down down up up down up all right this is a super common strumming Rhythm so you might find it a little easier um but basically what we would do is the same thing so on the verses you would apply this pattern two times per cord so again we've got our D chord on down down up up down up twice to a all right and for this one if you're going to opt for this pattern I wouldn't recommend doing like the accents and the palm muting for this one you can just play it as it is through the song so we've got D down up up down up I got my first real six string bought it at the five time play it till my fingers play it was the summer of 69 all right same thing for the chorus we're going to do this one time time per chord but it's the exact same pattern we've got B minor down down up up down up a to d to g oh when I look back now Sumer last forever all right um but like I said you can kind of choose which of these strumming rhythms is a little bit more natural for you whichever one is easier for you to kind of like do without counting in your head that's the one that's going to be a little easier to sing on top of eventually so go ahead and go to which one you think you know fits you better what I actually like to do in my cover is I'll go back and forth between both so for the verses I'll do the all down strum with the palm muting and the accents and then when I get to the chuses I like to go to the island strum so down down up up down up all right um so you'll notice when I do my cover I do both of these strumming rhythms but you could also totally just choose one or the other and apply it for the whole thing all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get these strumming rhythms under your belt they are both pretty common so I would definitely recommend pausing and giving yourself some time to get used to these because you can apply them to so many other songs um if you need help with your strumming I do have a practice with me strumming Series right here on YouTube as well so I'll make sure to link that in the corner I have both of these strumming rhythms ready to be practiced right now so I'll link that for those of you who need it once you get back I did want to show you a cool little like cord frill that you can do with the D and the a chords and it'll make it sound a lot more like the original song and it's like not very hard to do at all so once you get the struming Rhythm down definitely continue and we can go over how to do the cord thrs and guys really quick before we continue I wanted to give a special shout out to some of my top patrons over on my patreon page these are people I have seen grow over time because of our monthly troubleshooting sessions or sometimes our weekly lessons Pam Dave Rafa owl Cynthia Alex I loved watching you guys grow over the past few months so thank you so much for being patrons and uh with that being said let's go ahead and talk about these chord FRS all right guys so there are a few parts in this song where there's like a little bit of a break and instead of just playing your D chord to your a chord you can actually do a cool little chord frill that goes like this and I think it sounds really cool it's actually super easy to do so let me break that down for you guys first let's talk about our D chord frill so we're starting here on our D chord on our left hand and what I want you to do is we're going to take off our middle finger and this is going to be our D supended two chord all right so we're going to go from DS 2 and then add your middle finger back on to D then you're going to take your pinky and you're going to put that right underneath your ring finger on that E string all right that's going to make our DS 4 Chord all right so we've got DS 2 without the middle finger add the middle finger for d add the pinky for Gus 4 take the pinky off now go back to D now take your middle finger off go back to D suspended and then add your middle finger back on to end on D all right so we're just kind of playing around with the D open chord as well as the suspended two and the suspended four so we have DS 2 D DS 4 d DS 2 D all right and that's the chord frill so basically you want to be able to play it in time so if you've listened to the song and you're familiar with it you should be pretty natural with this but it goes so if you're someone who struggles with rhythm I'll break that down a little bit more for you so what I have listed at the top of the screen here are two measures so we have 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and four all right so we have DS 2 on the one then we have our D on the end of the two then we have DS 4 on the fourth beat of the first measure you're going to hold that out all the way into the next measure on the second beat of the second measure we have our d to D says 2 on three back to D on four okay so if this is all very confusing at the top of the screen and you can like hear it more than you can see it then just go by all means go with your you know natural gut feeling I'm just trying to break it down for people who like it more a little more mathematically so DS 2 D D4 d d says to d 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 okay once you get those chord changes on the right beat then you can go ahead and add in the rest of the strumming so for instance if you're doing the all down strum pattern you would go like this 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and okay and if you're opting to do the island strp my suggestion for rhythm on that would be like this all right so not exactly the same Rhythm we were playing earlier um but if this visually makes sense to you then go for it we've got D2 on one and two quick transition back to D on the and of two and three and D suspended four on the fourth beat four and 1 and back to d 2 and and DS 2 3 and back to D 4 and all right so um the actual chord Frills I don't think are that hard if you're but I do think that the rhythm is maybe something that people might struggle with a little bit more but it is important to be able to play it on the correct beats in order to sound like the original song So now that we've gone over kind of how the Rhythm goes let's go ahead and talk about the a chord frill it's going to look very similar we're starting here on our a chord okay if you take off your ring finger that's going to be our a suspended two okay so we're starting on our Aus 2 adding our ring finger to do the a then for a suspended four I add my pinky right above my ring finger on the third fret okay that's our Asus 4 if you have bigger hands than me or bigger fingers you can also just scoot your ring finger up okay I just like to add my pinky and then take your pinky off back to a and then we're going to take our ring finger off back to a suspended two back to a okay so just like with our D chord frill that goes our a chord is going to follow the exact same Rhythm we're starting on our Asos 2 okay so just like we practiced earlier if you're doing all down strums it would look like this or if you're doing the other strum it would look like this all right so both of these chord Frills are totally optional but I do think that if you're up for it and you can add it into your little cover I do think it really mimics the song a lot closer without being too much more difficult on a difficulty scale so definitely pause and try it and I think that if you want to use that in the interim between the verses and the choruses throughout the song it really sounds great um but yeah again totally optional and up to you all right guys so again go ahead and pause on this screen if you need a little more time to look over this Rhythm and over these cord Frills adding these is definitely more of an advanced beginner skill but I think that if you feel for it you should definitely give it a try cuz it is a lot of fun to play through and it does sound a lot better to the ear as far as being close to the original song um but once you have all of your cords and those Transitions and the strumming rhythms and this cord frill in if you want to add it then we can go ahead and put together all of the things we've learned in this video to play through the song one two ready go I got my first real six string but it at the five time played it till my fingers bled it was the summer of 69 me and some guys from school had a band and we tried real hard Jimmy quit Jody got married I should have known that we'd never get want to have fun jaming 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 as well as all my other playalong and FASTT trck 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 sound and feel but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye