The A Team by Ed Sheeran Tutorial/Lesson
The A Team
G, D/F#, Em, C, Am
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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 the A Team by Ed Sheeran on the guitar. Today I am featuring my Journey Instruments OF440 guitar, which is one of the coolest guitars I own. You can actually take it apart and put it in a backpack. So, it makes it super travel friendly as well as really awesome to show people. So, if you are interested in this model or any of their other collapsible guitars, I will definitely link them in the description box down below. I want to give a really quick shout out and thank you to my patrons for voting on this song as this month's patron picks. So, if you want a little bit of voting power in these songs that you see me teach here on this channel, make sure to check it out. I will link it down below as well. Here is 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 five different chord shapes to play through this song. And we're going to start with our G 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 free beginner series right here on YouTube. So, make sure to check that out right here. The next chord shape is our D over F sharp. After that, we have our E minor. We also have our C major. And the last chord shape is our A minor. And those are the only five 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 series right here on YouTube where we build this up in real time together. So, I'll make sure to link that in the corner if you need it. 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 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 downstrum 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. White lips, pale face, breathing in snowflakes, burnt lungs taste. 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. This song structure is not super straightforward like a lot of his other songs. So, it might take you a little bit of time to identify those split measure chord changes and things like that. So, this is 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 link that in the description box if you're interested. Um, but once you have an idea of where those chords are going to be changing, then we can go ahead and add to this single downstrum to make more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song. All right, guys. So, for strumming today, as you can see, we're going to be counting this in an eighth note rhythm. So, it's going to sound like this. We have 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and four and down up down up down up down up. All right, this is a super common strumming pattern that you'll see used in a lot of different songs. And normally I would tell you how many times we're going to play it per chord throughout the song. But in this song, like I said, the structure is a little bit different. So, you are going to have to repeat this pattern for certain chords, whereas you'll also only play it once for other chords. Sometimes we're going to have a split measures, which is where you want to play two different chords within one measure. So, let me go ahead and show you that strumming pattern as well. What I'm going to do here is put a vertical line in the middle, and that's going to show you where the split is or where we want to change chords. And I'm also going to change some of these arrows around so that you can see our split measure does change in rhythm a little. It's gonna sound like this. We have one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down up down down up down up down down up. All right, so it's kind of similar to the main strumming pattern, but the actual rhythm is a little different. And like I said, you only want to use this split pattern whenever we have a split measure. So for example, in breathing in snowflakes, we're going from G to D over F sharp to E minor. All right. So that G to D over F#arp is going to be an example of a split measure. So on our first chord, our G, we want to play the left half. So down, down, up to D over F sharp for the second half. Down, down, up. Then you get to that E minor and you're going to go back to that main strumming pattern that we'll play for the whole measure. Down, down, up, up, down, up. All right. So, one of the more confusing things about this song is going to be making sure you know where those split measures are. I'll have those listed and notated on my guide, so it makes it a little bit easier. But just be aware of that throughout. Um, whenever you have a split measure, we're doing the split measure pattern. But otherwise, you want to stick with the down, down, up, up, down, up pattern throughout the song. So, for example, let's go through the first verse. We have our G major on. We're going to go down, down, up, up, down, up twice, three times. Split measure here to D. And then E minor. And then another split measure C back to G. All right. Now, once you're used to where to expect all of those split patterns and things like that, then what you want to do is you want to start working on building up the speed or the tempo of your strumming. The song actually moves quite quickly. So, more at full tempo, it'll sound like this. Bringing in All right. So now, if you're more used to this song, you might be thinking this is sounding a really kind of muddy, like it's really ringing and all kind of joining together with the guitar. That is because something that Ed will do when he's playing through it is he's going to add some chucks. Okay, so this is totally optional if you don't want to add this in, but I do think it makes it sound a lot more like the original version. So, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to mark some of these arrows with some X's. And these X's represent where we want to chuck our strings. So whenever I'm chucking, basically I'm doing a down strum, but as I strum down, I'm taking the side of my hand with my pick in it, and I'm kind of like rubbing them against the strings as I strum down. And it's going to have more of this percussive sound. All right. Slowly, it's like it's very scratchy. You shouldn't be able to hear any notes. And um if you have this percussive sound on the second and the fourth beats, that changes the way that this sounds to the listener. So we have down, chuck, up, chuck, up. All right. Chucking can take a little bit of practice. So make sure to pause the video and try to as you strum down also kind of like take the side of your palm and kind of almost like hit the strings. Not hard, but like you know just using the tip of your pick, you want to kind of get this percussive sound. Um, but once you get it, like I said, you want to apply it on the second and the fourth beat. So we have down, check, up, up, chuck, up. All right. And with the split pattern, it's going to still be the same. You want to chuck the second and the fourth beats. So we're going to have down, chuck, up, down, chuck, up. All right. So, G chuck up to D over F sharp down chuck up. All right. So, if you're going to apply the chuck through your strumming, you can apply it for both the full measure and the split measure. So, for an example, let's go ahead and go through the first verse. We've got G All right. So hopefully that's sounding a little closer to the original there with some singing. It sounds like this. White lips breathing in snowflakes. All right. So, like I said, the chuck is totally optional, but if you can add it in, it does sound a lot more percussive like the original song. And I would recommend using this chucking um technique throughout the entire song. You just want to keep it going through the whole thing. So, let's go ahead and take a look at the precourse there. And they say she's in the course 18 stuck in her day dream since 18. All right. And then again in the chorus it will go there as well cuz we're just under the upper hand. Go mad for a couple. She don't want to go outside tonight. All right. And again, the bridge is going to continue as well. An angel's to fly, an angel will die covered in closed eyes. I'm hoping for a better life. All right. So once you get the strumming rhythm and the pattern down and you can add those chucks in, then you should be able to play through the entire song because we're going to keep those chucks going on two and four throughout. Okay. Um, and now one last thing I wanted to kind of show you, which is another totally optional thing, is at the very beginning of the song, um, if you want to play the intro, how you hear the electric in the beginning, super easy. You just have your G chord on. We're gonna pick the bass string or the sixth E string by itself. And then finish out with a strum. Okay. So, we have bass strum. And then what you want to do is with your pick, you're going to come back to this fourth D string and then your fifth A string and then back to your fourth D string. And the pick is up, down, up. And remember, your left hand is still holding down this G chord. So we have bass strum D A D. Okay. So you just want to do that for the first three measures. Then when you get to that first split measure, just go straight into strumming and then add the chuck. All right. So, totally optional, but if you want to add that in, it's a super easy way to do that. Um, but anyways, that is my suggestion for strumming for this song. And I think, like I said, once you get it all down under your belt, you can 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 really get this strumming rhythm under your belt. Like I said, this is a super common one that you'll see used in a lot of songs, but if you need help with speeding it up so that you can get it under your muscle memory, I would definitely recommend checking out my practice with me strumming series. I do have this exact pattern on YouTube right now. So, I will link that in the corner. Um, but once you have that down and if you can add those chucks in if you want and get used to those split measures and things like that, we can go ahead and put everything we've learned in this tutorial together to play through the song. 1 2 3 4 1 2 Ready, go. White lips face raining in snowflakes for long days. gone days and struggling to pay friends. Want to have fun jamming out to the rest of the 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 fast track 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.