The Joker and the Queen by Ed Sheeran ft. Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
The Joker and the Queen
Cmaj7, Dm7, F, G, Am7, G7, C
Download Printable Guitar Guide
Unlock with Patreon
Watch play along cover
Unlock with Patreon
Practice with my Backing Track
Unlock with Patreon
Are you new to playing the guitar? Watch my free Beginner Series where I show you all of the basics. You'll be playing your first songs in minutes!
Video transcript
hey everyone my name is ellen and today i'm going to be showing you guys how to play the joker and the queen by ed sheeran featuring taylor swift on the guitar so stay tuned that this is something that you'd like to learn and guys really quick before we jump into the tutorial i wanted to give a shout out and thank you to today's sponsor black mountain pigs black mountain picks are thumb picks that use an innovative spring design to hold the pick securely to your thumb i've loved using these recently because not only are they super comfortable affordable and durable but they don't slide or flip around on your thumb like other thumb picks i've used in the past these picks fit multiple playing styles and are perfect for when you want to alternate between picking and strumming with ease that makes them great for beginners and professionals alike no matter what stage you're at in your guitar journey best of all you'll get fast shipping and awesome customer service with every purchase so if you're interested in trying these out for yourself make sure to check out the link in my description and never lose another pick while playing your guitar again all right guys so i am going to classify this a little bit more towards the intermediate level of the scale to play uh for a few reasons but first of all let's go through the basics of what you'll need to know to play the song um you will have to have your guitar in standard tuning and you do not need a capo to play this song in its original key on top of that i'm going to be showing you seven chords to play through the whole song and two of them are barre chords which is one of the reasons it's a little bit more geared towards intermediate players i'm also going to take you through two strumming patterns as well as one picking pattern so let's go ahead and jump into it by starting with the chords alright guys so i've zoomed in a little bit so we can take a closer look at these chords like i said there are seven chords you're going to need to know to play through this song and we're going to start with our c major 7 which looks like this and sounds like this by the way if you don't know how to read these chord charts i do have a video that you can check out where i explain how to read those next up is our first little bar chord which is our d minor seven chord and that looks like this and sounds like this next up we have our other barre chord which is our f chord and that looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our g chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our a minor seven chord which looks like this and sounds like this then we have our g7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is our c chord which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the seven chords you need to know to play the song alright guys so i would recommend pausing on this next screen and just taking a few minutes to memorize all of these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning between them if that's something you need help with i do have a video in my beginner series episode 6 where i talk about how to transition your chord shapes a little bit faster and tips and tricks and things like that so check that out if you need to but then when you get back we can go into the strumming patterns that i like to use for this song all right so those of you who've been on my channel for a while already know what's up i'm going to start you off with a practice pattern which is just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change i always suggest beginners start like this because not only does it help you get those transitions down and get a little bit of practice with singing and playing at the same time but it's also a great way to ease into some harder strumming patterns so let's go ahead and go through what this would look like so i have some chord progressions here on screen and all we're going to want to do is one simple down strum for each of these chords so we're starting with our c major 7 strum down once d minor 7 strum down once then we have f and g and then c major seven again all right and that's kind of one little round for this song and so basically what i want you to do is go through the entire song with just the one simple down strum and get used to what word you're singing whenever you're changing those chords and that'll really help you a lot when you get into those more complicated strumming patterns so let's go ahead and put that on screen and i will take you through the first part of this song just as an example how was i to know it's a crazy thing i showed you my hand and you still let me all right so basically go through the rest of the song just like that to get a little bit more used to it but once you've done that we can go ahead and go into strumming pattern one all right guys so as you can see a strumming pattern one is going to be down down down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this all right so basically what we'll be doing is playing one down strum on each of those quarter notes and then we're adding a little bit of an extra tail here at the end so let's go ahead and put on our c major 7 chord so i can demonstrate this for you the motions are just going to be simple down down down up all right so you can hear that last little down up is like leading into the next little round so rhythmically it's going to be like this one two three four and uh all right and basically what you want to do is repeat this pattern through one time for each chord so let's go ahead and do the next chord which is our d minor seven it's going to be the same thing down down up all right now in this song there are going to be a few places where the chord transitions move a little bit faster so for example the next two chords are going to be f and g but they're going to move twice as fast as these other chords so what are we going to do about that i'm going to put part of this strumming pattern in parentheses so as you can see our down down up is in parentheses that is what i want you to do for each of these chords that move a little bit faster so for example with our f and g chord we're just gonna go down down up and then switch to g down down up all right and then you'd go back to your c major seven and do the entire strumming pattern down down up all right so let's go ahead and go through one whole little round and then you can see where we're going to be putting our parentheses rhythm in versus where we're going to use the whole pattern so with our c major 7 chord on we've got down down up d minor 7 down down a parenthesis down down up g down down up c major seven one more time down down you got it it's a crazy all right and so basically you could use this strumming pattern for the entire song it sounds really good really mellow which is you know very reminiscent of what the song i think was originally intending to go for as far as feelings but in my cover i do like to use it just for ed sheeran's first verse and chorus section and then when we get to taylor's part i like to go into a picking pattern but first of all let me show you a second strumming pattern that you can use to play through this song alright guys so for strumming pattern two you can see it's a little bit more detailed than string pattern one and it's down down up down down down up and it's going to sound a little something like this all right guys and similarly to strumming pattern one we're just going to play through this entire strumming pattern one time for each chord so let's put on our c major seven chord and just go through the motions we've got down up up down down down up all right one more time down up up down down down up so there's a lot of different motions going on there so if you need to pause the video and practice that at your own pace for a little while longer but i want to go ahead and move on and show you guys how to put this in the song so again there's going to be chords where we're going to hold this whole pattern out for each chord and then there's going to be parts where the chords change a little bit faster so let's go ahead and put that on screen i have my c major 7 chord and my d minor 7 chord and you're going to play through this entire strumming pattern one time for each of those chords so for c major seven we've got down down up up down down down up then you go to d minor seven same thing down down up up down down down up then here for f and g again we're transitioning those chords a little bit faster so what i'm going to do here is put a little bit of a vertical line kind of in the middle-ish of this strumming pattern and that vertical line is going to represent where we're going to be changing chords okay so on the left half which is just down down we're going to do our f chord so down then you would quickly switch to your next chord which is our g and play the rest of this pattern up up down up all right so that whole measure is f so it's a little bit of a quick transition so you want to make sure that your chord transition shapes are you know down pat but basically that is how you would use this pattern through so let's go ahead and put a round here on screen and what i want you to do is play the whole pattern through for c major 7 and d minor 7 then we're going to do the vertical line split for the f and g chord and then do the whole thing again for our c major 7. so the whole thing's going to sound like this d minor 7. c major seven you got it it's a crazy beautiful so again you could also use this strumming pattern to play through the whole song if you like the way that sounds the place that i like to use it is kind of more towards the end where it gets into that more instrumental break bridge kind of area i think that's a great place to put this strumming pattern but for taylor's verse and her second little chorus i do like to use a picking pattern so let's zoom in so i can show you the picking pattern for that all right guys so we've zoomed in a little bit to take a closer look at this picking pattern before we start i do just want to point out that i like to refer to my strings as numbers so the low e is six and it goes five four three two one all the way to the high e and it just makes more sense in my brain to think of them as numbers so hopefully it does in your brain as well but i will be referring to these strings as numbers for this picking portion of this tutorial but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into how i would do this picking pattern so basically what you're going to want to do is take your thumb and your thumb is going to cover the base strings or the base notes in each of these chords so it's either going to be on the 6th string the 5th string or the 4th string then you're going to want to take your pointer middle and ring finger and kind of lay those on the top three strings the third g the second b and the high e okay and those fingers are going to live on these top three strings for this whole picking pattern the only thing that's ever going to change is your thumb so we're gonna start with our c major seven chord since that's the first chord in the song and basically what i want you to do is start out with your bass note which is our fifth string in the c major seven chord then you're gonna take your pointer and do three middle on two pointer three then you're going to take your ring on the high e and then go back to your pointer three two three all right so you can kind of see there's a little bit of a pattern there so we're going five three two three one three two three and i promise you guys this will be a lot easier if you keep your top three fingers your pointer middle ring on those top three strings for this entire thing so again c major seven is five three two three one three two three isn't that beautiful next we have our d minor seven chord and for this one the pattern is going to be the same but what you're going to change is your thumb so now your thumb is going to be on the fourth d string since that's the base note in this chord shape but the pattern's the same so we've got four three two three one three two three all right so going back and forth between c major seven and d minor seven we have five three two three one three two d minor seven two three one three two three all right and like with our strumming patterns when you get to the f and the g chord again it's going to go a little bit faster so the picking pattern is going to change a little bit so let's put our f chord down what i want you to do for this remember your thumb's on the bass note so that's going to be our sixth string here you're going to go thumb on six pointer on three and this time i want you to use your middle and ring finger to pick the top two strings at the same time okay so we've got six three two and one and then go back and finish it out with your pointer finger on the third string so f is gonna go six three two and one three all right and then same with g so with our g chord down it's going to be the same pattern we've got six three two and one three all right so now let's put f and g together six three two and one three six three two and one three beautiful and then to finish out that round you just go back to your c major seven all right so if you put this whole thing together without stopping it will sound a little bit more beautiful and make a little bit more sense so let's go ahead and do that with our c major seven chord five three two three one three two three d minor seven f g back to c major seven all right and again like i said i like to use this during taylor's verse i've been played before if you hadn't guessed so i kept my call close to my foolproof all right and as with the strumming pattern you could use this picking pattern to play through the whole song if you wanted to but like i said i like to use it during taylor's versus like her verse and her chorus so if you do want to use picking for the chorus we do need to know a few other chords so let's go ahead and go over those really quickly we've got our a minor 7 chord down so for that one your thumb is going to be on the fifth a string but the pattern is going to be the same so we've got five three two three one three two three all right and then for c it's gonna be just like that two five three two three one three two three and then the only other chord you'll need to know is your g7 chord and that g7 chord is going to be played as like a quicker transition with your g chord so that one's gonna be played like your g chord so we're gonna go six three two and one three all right so let me just go ahead and show you where that goes so that you can hear it when i fold you see the best in me all right so hopefully you heard that g to g7 is where we do that shorter picking pattern all right um but with that being said that is the picking pattern that i like to use for this song so let's go ahead and put everything we've learned together to play through the whole song together and i know you think that what makes a king is two three how was i tuned it's a crazy thing want to have fun playing through 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 fast track and play-along tutorials i'll make sure to put a link in the description box below as well as link it in this icard up here all right guys but that does conclude my tutorial for today i really hope that you liked it and found it helpful if you did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on any other new tutorials thanks again to black mountain picks for sponsoring this video and a huge thank you and shout out to my top patrons over on my patreon page luis mark pam tony cynthia joe paul ally and kristen here are my social media links in case you'd like to follow me on any of those that's just where i do fun things like behind the scenes looks at things coming up i'll pull you guys on what you want to learn next and i'll even do giveaways on there a few times a year so make sure to check that out if you'd like to but that being said that does conclude the video so thank you so much for watching i really hope it helped and i will see you in my next one bye you