The Bones by Maren Morris Tutorial/Lesson
The Bones
D, G, Bm, A
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Video transcript
hey everyone my name is Ellen and today I'm gonna be showing you guys how to play the bones by Maren Morris on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn so this song is not going to be too hard if you're a beginner my guitar is in standard tuning and you do not need a capo to play this song in the original key beyond that we also have four chords that we need to know now one of them is a Barre chord but no worries if you're struggling with Barre chords I have a TM T on how to practice those and get better at them beyond that we have only two strumming patterns and one little lead line picking pattern to play through the song so let's go ahead and jump into what I'm going to be teaching you in this tutorial now like I said we have four chords to play to this song those are G D B minor and a and now remember B minor is a barre chord so if that's something you're struggling with make sure to check out my TNT on how to get better at those if you're familiar with these chords then great if not though however we can go over the chords and I'll show you how to play them at this time here so go ahead and skip to that time for the chords um after that we're gonna go through the first strumming pattern which is just going to be one down strum on the beat for every chord change this is going to be a super simple pattern that'll really help you get used to where those chord transitions are going to be so if you feel like you already got it then that's great but if you want to go through it and kind of get a little more practice with it and see an example of how it sounds in these song they go ahead and skip to this time here and we'll go through the first strumming pattern of just one down strum after that we'll jump into our second strumming pattern and as you can see it's a little bit longer we've got down down up down up up down down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this so if you feel like you already got the rhythm of that strumming pattern then that's great however if you want to break it down a little bit more and get a little more practice with how it sounds within the song the go ahead and skip to this time here where I will break down strumming pattern two for you and we'll go through a more in-depth example after that the last thing I'm going to teach you is the little lead line picking pattern that you can hear throughout the song and it's gonna sound a little something like this alright so if you kind of got it just by watching me then that's great however if you want me to break it down for you a little bit more and show you how to do that picking pattern go ahead and skip to this section right here and I will show you how to do that little lead line however if you feel pretty confident in yourself and you think that you've got it all after watching this overview go ahead and skip to the end of the video for the play through and that's where I'll have everything on screen in front of you with the lyrics and the chords and everything like that so that you can play through the song with me however if you want to take a closer look at anything then let's go ahead and jump into the in-depth part of this tutorial by starting with the chord all right so let's take a closer look at these chords like I said there's only four of them and we're gonna start with our G chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got our D chord which looks like this and sounds like this next we have B minor which is our Barre chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is a which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the only four chords you need to know for this song alright so after you have those chords memorized go ahead and take the time to practice transitioning between them because it is really important to get used to those transitions especially in this song since it's only these four chords and they transition among themselves the whole time so if you need a little help with that I have a TMT right over here about how to practice transitioning a little bit faster but once that's out of the way let's go ahead and fit into the strumming patterns all right so the first strumming pattern is just a simple down strum on the beat for every chord change if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials I usually call this my practice pattern however in this song we are going to be using it throughout the song so this is gonna be strumming pattern 1 and again all you want to do is do one down strum on the beat for every chord change so let's go ahead and go through an example of this so go ahead and put your G chord on since that's the first chord in the song and I just want you to strum it down once then you switch to your next chord which is d and strum that down once and that's the whole pattern just one down strum for every chord change so let's go ahead and put it in rhythm 1 2 3 4 so basically you want to do that for the entire songs that go ahead and practice this one down strum strumming pattern for the entire song until you're used to where those transitions are going to take place and that'll really help you get into our more complicated strumming pattern which is coming up next so with that first drawing pattern under your belt let's go ahead and skip into our second strumming pattern so this is strumming pattern two and as you can see it's down down up down up up down down up and now I know it seems pretty long but what we're gonna do is break it up a little bit and we're actually going to do our chord transitions in the middle of this pattern so it'll seem a lot easier once we get started so again put your G chord on since that's the first chord in the song and what I want you to do is just first of all practice this pattern through slowly with me so we've got all right so now what we want to do is put this in rhythm so again have your G chord on it's gonna sound a little something like this all right so why don't you practice that rhythm with me with your G chord on oh hey great job so now once you have the emotions in your picking hand down all you want to do now is speed up the rhythm a little bit so let me go ahead and play it for you at tempo so you can hear it alright so you can see it's a little bit faster why don't you go ahead and try it with me again we're just staying on our G chord one two and three and four and all right awesome now if you weren't able to keep up with me at that tempo make sure to pause the video and practice it at your own tempo and gradually speed it up until you can get it at tempo but once you have it at tempo now all we have to do is add in those core transitions now what am I gonna change chords is in the middle of this pattern so for our first down down-up we're going to have our first chord on which in this case is G and then for the rest of the pattern we're going to change our chord to the next chord so in this case that would be our D chord so let's just practice going from G to D right here so with our G chord on we're doing just the first half of this pattern we've got now then you would switch to your next chord which is D and finish out the pattern so we'll just stick to those two chords for now G to D and let's practice that one more time one two and three and four and how was that hopefully you were able to keep up so if you were able to keep up now we just have to keep on going with those chord transitions so the next group of chords we would have would be B minor to a so again let's put our B minor chord on we're switching from B minor to a as we just practice with our G to our D chord so let's go ahead and give that a practice we've got B minor on then you switch to a and finish out the pattern all right one more time with B minor so you can hear the pattern is exactly the same as we just practice we're just practicing our chord transitions now so let's go ahead and put all of it together starting with our G chord so we're gonna go from G to D to B minor to a with this pattern you ready one two and three and four and all right so if you have that second strumming pattern down then congratulations you can actually use that for the entire song and places the entire song with that strumming pattern however the last thing I wanted to show you guys was that little lead line picking pattern that you hear mostly at the beginning but also throughout the song so let's go ahead and jump into that picking pattern all right so I've zoomed in so we can take a closer look at that little lead line picking pattern if you're unfamiliar with my other tutorials I do like to refer to these strings as numbers I think it's easier in my head to think about them that way so hopefully it is for you as well you can see the low E is number six and it goes all the way to the high E which is number one so that is how I will be referring to these strings for this little section of the tutorial but let's go ahead and jump into it so what I want you to do is first find your tenth fret so if your guitar has dots like mine it's the threat right above the third set of dots however if you don't have any dots you can also just count your frets so one two three four five six seven eight nine ten so this is my tenth fret here okay and what I want you to do is put your first pointer finger on the tenth fret of the fifth string all right then I want you to take your ring finger and we're gonna stretch the cross to the twelfth fret of the second B string alright so we've got and what I'm doing with my picking hand is I'm using my thumb to pick the a string or the fifth string and my pointer finger to pick the second B string all right and now what we're gonna do is pick back and forth between these twice so we've got okay okay and that's the little first part of this from here we're going to slide into our next position and your fingers can kind of stay in the same spot for when we're sliding what we want to do now is take your first finger that's on the tenth fret of the fifth string and I want you to concentrate on sliding it down to the fifth fret so again on my guitar I have these dots so it's very helpful for me when I'm sliding if you don't you'll just have to count down to the fifth fret but you'll see your hand position is the same so we're going from tenth fret and twelfth fret to fifth fret and seventh fret alright so your first finger is still on that fifth a string and your ring finger is still on the second B string two frets apart okay so now we've got five and seven again with my picking hand I'm still using my thumb and my pointer finger all right so again you want to play through this alternating twice one two and then we're gonna just slap our strings and kind of create that mute sound I like to kind of fold my hand into a little bit of a fist so that I can use my nails to make that kind of sound otherwise you can do it with an open hand is the same thing all right so let's go ahead and try that again we've got ten to twelve then slide down 5 to 7 and then mute all right so that's all on the same strings we're using the fifth and the second string to do this it's gonna take a little bit of practice for you to slide between those but again it just is muscle memory kind of so you just want to practice this slowly and then speed it up alright so after you get that you're halfway done so let's go ahead and go into the next little section what I like to do here is I will take my middle finger because you can see here in this position my middle finger is already open and ready to go so what I'm gonna do is stretch and put my middle finger on the seventh fret of the bottom east string ok so see how it's stretching there and then I'm just stretching it over to the bottom east string from there you can move your ring finger over one string so we're moving it from the second string to the third string but we're still on the seventh fret ok so we were just right here what I did was I put my second finger down on the seventh fret of the low E string and then I just moved my ring finger up one string ok see that it's just a very minimal movement and so now this is the next set of strings that you want to pick and again I'm using my thumb for the low string and my on your finger for the higher string all right and then again you just want to do that twice and we're almost done what I want you to do is slide your hand position look at your middle finger here you're gonna slide that down two frets so now your middle finger is gonna be on the fifth fret of your low E string but your ring finger is going to be on the sixth fret of the g string the third string okay so we just went from seventh fret and seventh fret to fifth fret and sixth fret all right so let's go ahead and practice that transition again we're on 7 & 7 on the 6th and 3rd strings and then you're going down to five and six on the six and third string and then of course once you've done that twice you want to do that mute one more time just like we did at the beginning so let's go ahead and put all of that together starting on our tenth fret tenth and twelfth frets slide down to fifth and seventh fret mute then stretch and do your second finger we're on our seventh fret slide down now if you find this easier to use any other fingers please feel free to do so as you guys know I'm not really a super big finger picker but um this is just the way that I found was the most comfortable for me to play it with these fingers so hopefully if you have smaller hands like I do then maybe you'll find this comfortable as well otherwise you know experiment around with different fingers and see which one's feel the most comfortable to you so again let's do that one more time and that's the whole picking pattern and you can pretty much play that through the entire song because you do hear it throughout the song so in my cover I'll be playing that on top of my rhythm guitar all right so once you have those chords memorized you can transition between them you've practiced both strumming pattern and you've attempted that picking pattern if you want to let's go ahead and put all of those elements together so we can play through the whole song again I will have everything you need on screen in front of you while we play through together so yes this is the bones by Maren Morris good luck good the glass could shatter all right so that was my tutorial for the phones by Mary Morris I really hope that you liked it if you did please remember to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to leave a comment of any other songs that you want to see tutorials for in the future here are my social media sites in case you'd like to follow me on any of those I'll just do fun little things on them like polls and behind-the-scenes looks at things coming up and sometimes I'll do an occasional giveaway this is also where I find people to feature in my new segment forever features this week we have Erin singing perfect by Ed Sheeran let's give it a listen for me darling just died Friday follow me I found a boy beautiful and sweet I never knew you were the song waiting for me so if you want to be featured in my next tutorial make sure to follow me on instagram post a short cover after you playing a song that amused my tutorial to learn and use that hashtag forever features in the description so that I can find it and the next feature spot could be you also one last little plug if you like the shirt that I was wearing in today's tutorial this is my forever faithful logo shirt which you can find in my merch store link down below or under this video every purchase there helps to make this channel a little bit better and helps me to continue making free tutorials for you guys so thanks again for watching I really hope that you liked it and I will see you in my next video bye you