Take On Me by a-ha Tutorial/Lesson
Take On Me
Am, D, G, C, G/B, Em, D/F#, Bm, F
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Video transcript
hey everyone it's Ellen here again and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Take On Me by aha on the guitar and today I Am featuring my journey instruments of 440 guitar which is one of my collapsible travel guitars it's super cool you can fold it in half and put it in a backpack and take it with you so if you are interested in this model or any of their other collapsible guitars I will make sure to link them in the description box 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 do need to know nine different chord shapes to play through this song although one of these is optional so I'll label that for you as we go but first of all let's go ahead and start with our first chord shape which is our a minor 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 free beginner Series right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out right there the next chord shape is our D major we also have our G major and I am using the four-finger version of G and that's going to make our transitions a little easier we also have our C major the next chord shape is our G over B and I would recommend fretting it like this with your middle finger and and your pinky just cuz we're always going to be going from our C to our G over B in this song but if you find it simpler you could also fret it with your index finger and your ring finger and the other option is you could also totally ignore this chord and just play a regular G okay um so G over B is kind of an optional one after that we have our E minor chord shape next is our D over fshp after that our last two are going to be our bar chords so we have our B minor and we also have our F major and those are all the 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 memorize all of these different 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 for you the song does move really quickly so those chord transition speeds are going to be really important in this so if that's something you're currently struggling with I do have an entire practice with me playlist right here on YouTube where we go through these chord Transitions and speed them up together in real time so I'll make sure link that playlist 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 suggest for this song all right guys so as 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 would suggest doing is to bring up the song and go ahead and go through the entire thing with just a single down strum on each chord change as you sing through the song and you want to take this time to really 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 we're talk get away I don't know what I'm to say I'll say it anyway today is in my day to find you 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 going to be changing and this actually something to 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 for those of you who are interested but once you've done this 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 my suggestion for strumming for this song as you can see is our famous down down up up down up eighth note pattern so it's going to sound like this we have 1 and 2 and three and four and 1 and 2 and three and four and down down up up down down up up down up all right this is a super popular shamming pattern that you can apply to so many different songs so I would definitely recommend getting it under your muscle memory um it'll work really well for this song as well so basically what we want to do is we're going to play it one time per chord throughout the song so let's go ahead and take a look at that first verse we're starting here on our a minor chord and you want to apply this strumming pattern once so we have down up up down up to our next chord D down down up up down up to G down down up up down up and then here the C to G over this is the only place where the strumming pattern is going to change up throughout the song what we're going to do here is we're actually going to split one measure between these two chords so I'm going to add a vertical line and then I'm going to change some of these arrows around so now you can see we have down down up on the one side and down up on the other side what we're going to do is play our C major on the first half so we have down down up do a quick transition to our G over B and finish out the measure down down up all right and remember if you don't want to do G over B you can just do c to your regular G okay but either way you want to split this measure into those two chords so we have C down up G over B down up and then when you go to your a minor you would again do the full pattern all right so this little pattern is going to be the same throughout the entire song except for those splits so let's go ahead and do the first verse as an example we've got a minor to d g c split G over B A minor d g c split G we're talking away I don't know why I'm to say I'll say it anyway today is in my day the find all right so throughout the song it's going to basically follow that pattern and that chord progression the one place of course that it's going to be different is the chor so let's go ahead and bring up an example of that for our chorus we're going from our G to our D over F sharp to our E minor and what we're going to do is apply this pattern too so we've got G down down up up down up D over F sharp to E minor to C all right and that's going to be the chords for the chorus so stringing it together and speeding it up a little would sound like this we've got g d over F E minor to see take Take On Me on and take on here with the uh phrase I'll be gone every time you hear this throughout the song it kind of goes more into that like slower drum beat kind of thing so that's actually where I would recommend changing to your second strumming pattern although it's totally optional so let's go ahead and jump into strumming pattern two all right so for strumming pattern two again this is totally optional but I think it sounds really cool we're going to kind of pair it down a little bit so it's just going to be down up mute in the uh rhythm of one and two and three and four and so we have one and two and three and four and on that third bead all I'm doing is I'm slapping the strings to mute them because you'll see as you play through the chords it kind of stops them from ringing so on that line Al be gone we're going from G down up mute to D over F down up mute to E minor to C all right totally optional but if you go from that more full strumming pattern into this strumming pattern I do think it sounds pretty much like the song so on that chorus we're going from our Island strum down down up up down up down down up up down up and then on Al gone we're going to go to this more simple strumming pattern gone in a day and then on the word two go back to the full strumming in a day or two all right so this second string pattern is totally optional but I do think if you can add it in just to that line I'll be gone throughout your performance I think it sounds really cool and a lot like the original um but anyways yeah those are my suggestions for strumming for the song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get this strumming Rhythm under your belt like I said it's a super popular one that you can you apply to so many different songs so I would definitely recommend taking the time to get it under that muscle memory um if you need help with that I do have a practice with me strumming series here on YouTube as well and I have this exact pattern so I'll link that in the corner um but anyways once you have the strumming for this song down then we can go ahead and add everything we've learned together to play through the song one two ready go we're talking I don't know why I'm to say I say it anyway want to have fun jaming out to the rest of this song with me then make sure to check out my patreon page where you 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