The Climb by Miley Cyrus Tutorial/Lesson
The Climb
E, Asus2, F#m, B, C#m, G#m, A
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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 The Climb by Miley Cyrus on the guitar 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 jump into it all right guys so we need seven different chord shapes to play through this song so let's go ahead and start with our E 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 sing on screen I Do cover how to do that in my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure check that out the next chord shape is our a suspended two from there we have our first bar chord which is our F sharp minor then from there we go to our other bar chord which is our B major from there is another bar chord which is our csharp minor then our last bar chord is our G sharp minor and then the last chord shape you need to know is our a major and those are the seven chords to play through the song 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 I know there's a lot of bar chords for this song so if that's something you're currently struggling with I would suggest checking out my brand new bar chord miniseries where I go over everything from how to make them sound better to how to practice them how to transition between them things like that so I will make sure to link that so you guys can check that out um but once you have these chords memorized and you can play them pretty well then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that you can use for this song So if you are new to guitar or you struggle with playing and singing at the same time the first thing I would suggest is to bring up the song and go ahead and play through the whole thing with a single downum as you sing through the words and just take this time to get used to where those core transitions are going to be happening so here's a quick example of what that would look like for the beginning I can almost see it that dream I'm dreaming but there's all right so you would basically want to do that for the entire song and just make a mental note of wherever those chords are going to be changing and 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 will make sure to leave that link in the description box for you guys once you have the simple summing pattern down we can talk a little bit more about a more full strumming pattern that you can use for this song all right guys so we are going to be counting this in a 16th note rhythm today so if you don't know what that means or how to count that make sure to check out my beginner series cuz I Do cover that there but basically for the Rhythm we have this we have one E and A two e and a three e and a four and a one E and A two e and a three e and a four and up down down up up down down up down down up up down down down all right and really quick before we move on I am going to put a vertical line after the first two down strums and that's just going to represent where we want to change chords um we're not always going to want to change chords in the strumming pattern but um between the F minor and the B that you'll see at the ends of all the verses and the choruses and stuff that's where we're going to want to do this chord change so let's go ahead and bring up verse two as an example for most of this song you will be playing this full strumming pattern one time through per chord and the only place you want to do the chord change with the vertical line is between F minor and B so in verse two you can see here we have e we're going to go down up up down down down up twice then you go to your a suspended two down down up up down down down up and then here between the F Shar minor and the B is where we're going to change chords so we're starting with our F minor down down then change to B up up down down down all right so that's an example of where you want to do the split pattern but for the most part you're going to do the full strumming pattern for the whole song so if we speed it up a little bit and add some singing in there you'll see how it comes together we have down down up up down down up down down up up down down the struggles I'm faing the changes I'm take it sometimes my knock down no I'm not breaking all right so you can see there that's where we do the split um and that's basically how I would suggest doing the strumming for almost the entire song however there is a section where I use a different strumming pattern so let's go ahead and go over that right now all right guys so for this next strumming pattern it's still going to be counted in a 16th note pattern so we have one e and a twoy and a 3 E and A 4 e and up down down up down down down up all right and really quick I am going to add another vertical line here too because we are going to be splitting this pattern in half and changing cords at the vertical line wherever we need to so you can see here in the chorus for most of it we are going to be playing the previous strumming pattern there on the other here on the word side we're going to do a walk down between our csharp minor to our B to our a and this is where I would use this other strumming pattern so here on our C minor we would go down down down up to our B chord down down down up and then when you get to your a I would switch back into the previous strumming pattern down down up up down down down up all right so in context that whole like walk down section would sound like this fast I get there a B on the other side it's the up up down down so you can see the only place I use that strumming pattern is for the C Shar minor and the b in the walk down at the end of all of the choruses um but basically those are the strumming patterns that I would suggest using and you can use them for the entire song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really internalize these strumming rhythms um if you're still counting it out loud whenever you play it you want to get it to a point where you've internalized it enough that you can play through it without actively counting it in your head and that'll make it a lot easier to sing on top of so once you have these strumming patterns under your belt we can put everything together to play through the song one two ready go I can almost see it that dream I'm dream there's aide my you'll never want to have fun Jimmy out to the 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 FASTT track and playong guitar tutorials I'll make sure to leave a link 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 will see you over there bye