The Man by Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
The Man
F, G, C, Am
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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 man by Taylor Swift on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn now I'd be okay so this song is actually going to be really great for beginners out there because there's only four chords in the entire song and just one real strumming pattern that you need to know of course like always I'll show you a couple of different variations of strumming patterns that way you can kind of jazz up the guitar part a little bit and the four chords that you do need to know for this song one of them is a Barre chord which is the F chord but no worries there either if you're a beginner I will show you an alternate fingering for F so that way you don't have to actually hold the bar and in addition to that you don't need a capo to play this in the original key that Taylor sings it in so with all of that being said let's go ahead and take a closer look at those chords all right so let's take a closer look at the four chords you need to know for this song the first one is f which is our Barre chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right and then again if you find bar chords to be really hard and this is hard for you to play you can do the alternate version of F it's an alternate fingering which looks like this and sounds like this the thing you want to remember with this fingering is that you won't want to strum the top or the bottom string because otherwise it'll kind of mess up the chord so for this one when you're strumming you just want to strum the four middle strings and again this is in case you don't want to play the bard version of F alright so the next chord we want to know is our G chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right after that we've got C which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know for this song is our a minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right and those are the only four chords you need to know for the song all right so once you have those chords memorized I always say to practice transitioning between them at the beginning of all of my tutorials and it's especially important in this song because the chords are going through the same transition throughout the entire song so for the whole song it goes from F to G to C to a minor so it'll really help you learn the song a lot faster if you take the time to practice those transitions now and make sure that you can transition pretty quickly between each of those chords so once you have that down we'll go ahead and jump into some strumming patterns that you can use with this song all right so let's take a closer look at some of these strumming patterns that you can use for this song like I always start out with all of my videos let's go ahead and do a practice pattern which is just where you give each chord a one down strum while you kind of sing through you know to different parts of the song that way you know where those chord transitions are going to be so that you can kind of get used to where you're doing those transitions so let's go ahead and put on our F chord since that's the first chord in the song and for each of these chords just strum down once with your picking hand and we're gonna go through each transition so we've got F then we've got G then we've got sea and then we have a minor okay so simple down strum on each of those chords and now let's go ahead and put the lyrics with it that way you can kind of hear where those transitions are going to be I would be calm I would be cool they say I play the field and that would be okay for me to do every connoisseur and like I said the chord transitions are the same so the progressions of the chords are the same for the whole song so you could definitely take the time to pause the video right now and go through the entire song and just seeing everything with one down strum that way you get really used to the rhythm and where those chord transitions are taking place but after you get that down let's go ahead and jump into our first strumming pattern so here's our first strumming pattern as you can see it's down up mute down mute so whenever you see this little asterisks the mute is going to be me taking my hand my picking hand and after I strum I'm just going to kind of mute the strings right here by kind of tapping on where the strings are by the sound hole kind of between the sound hole and the bridge and so whenever you're having a chord that rings you're just gonna meet it with your right hand alright so that's that's all that mute is okay so once you get that let's go ahead and practice the entire pattern so with my F chord on we've got mute mute let's do that again we've got mute mute all right so you have to kind of put it into rhythm to kind of hear how this would fit into the song so let me go ahead and play it for you in rhythm all right let's go a little slower so you can play that with me go ahead and put your F chord on we've got it so you can see there's a little bit more of a ringing after the second down strum before the second mute so alright so that's the whole strumming pattern and once you get that pattern down and the rhythm down all you do now is add back in those chord transitions so let's go ahead put our F chord on we've got mute then you switch to the next chord which is our G chord same thing mute alright then we've got C and then a minor so the pattern is the same throughout everything but we're just going to be switching our chord so let's go ahead and do that again without stopping starting with our F chord we've got all right and then again once you get that pattern down we can start putting the words back into it so you can kind of hear what that sounds like so let me go ahead and take you through the first verse of the song so you can hear what it sounds like with the lyrics I would become alright and the cool thing about this pattern is that it actually fits for the entire song so if you are just comfortable with this pattern you like the way it sounds you could definitely use this pattern for the entire song including all of the verses the courses the bridge everything however I did want to kind of teach you guys a few variations of this pattern that are not super any harder so that way you can kind of have a little bit more variation in your guitar playing when you're doing your covers that way kind of just gives the guitar a little bit more interest a little bit more of a layer to it so let's go ahead and jump into our second strumming pattern so here's our second strumming pattern as you can see it begins with the first strumming pattern but we're adding a little bit more to the end here so go ahead and put your F chord on again it's starting like the first one we got but right here instead of muting and then you know repeating the pattern we're going to kind of finish out the phrase so we've got all right I know that's kind of long but once you get into the rhythm of the song it goes a lot faster than a lot easier so let's go ahead and try that again put your F chord on let's start from the beginning we've got all right one more time again this is one of those patterns where you kind of have to put it in rhythm to hear how it goes together so let me go ahead and speed it up just a little bit and show you what it sounds like in rhythm so again I have my F chord on all right so go ahead and do that with me go ahead put your F chord on let's do it again at that speed all right so you've got all right and then again once you have that pattern down all you do now is add in the rest of the chords so let's go ahead and take it through one whole little phrase we've got our F chord on all right so once you have that pattern down one extra little thing that you can do if you want to of course you don't need to but this is something that I like to personally do when I do my covers of it because it kind of gives it again a little bit more interest is I will take the second pattern but I will add a palm mute so what I'm doing is whenever I'm strumming down instead of letting the strings ring I kind of leave the side of my picking hand kind of resting on the strings between the sound hole and the bridge and when you lightly rest it against the strings it'll mute the sound so they don't ring as much so you'll see whenever I strum down it's kind of muting the strings a little bit you can still hear that F chord coming through but it's a lot more subdued a lot quieter and so what happens when is when I do my down strums it'll mute it but when I do my upstroke you know not resting on the strings it'll kind of do a little bit of a ringing sound so whenever I do that together for this pattern I think it sounds really cool so we've got alright and so when you put the chords back into it I feel like it just kind of gives it a little bit more of a rhythmic feel which is very similar to the original song so let me go ahead and show you what this exact same pattern sounds like when you add a little bit of a palm mute alright so the place I actually like to put this in my cover is always like around the pre-chorus kind of where she's building up into the chorus I think it does a really cool effect of kind of building up the suspense into the chorus which is where she talks about how her life would be different if she was a man which is a very powerful statement so I like to do it that way so let me go ahead and show you what that sounds like with the pre-chorus I got my F chord on and again this is the exact same pattern we're just adding a poem yet so we've got F what's that like so you can kind of see how it makes it a little bit more fun or maybe that's just me but that's something that I like to add into that second strumming pattern so if you're feeling up to it and you want to try that Pamyu I would definitely suggest adding it to this pattern and doing it during the pre-chorus because I think it sounds really cool alright so with the second strumming pattern down we only have one strumming pattern left so here it is this is our third strumming pattern and as you can see it's just all down strums but what we're going to do to make this interesting is we're going to kind of emphasize certain beats in this pattern so first of all let's go ahead and go through the pattern with our F chord on we're just going to strum down eight times super simple right so go ahead do that with me with your F chord all right so now the next thing you want to do is kind of add that palm you into it so this is just like we did with strumming pattern - you're just going to rest your hand here and then do the 8 down strums one two three four five six seven eight alright and then the last thing you want to do is go ahead and emphasize certain down strums okay so we're gonna go ahead and emphasize the first the fourth and the seventh down strum and you'll see this kind of creates a really cool rhythm so I've got one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six all right and so you can see what I'm doing there is every time I do the first the fourth and the seventh feet I'm just giving a little bit more force with my picking hand so that it's giving it a little bit of an accent there okay and so once you speed that up a little bit it sounds very cool very rhythmic so let me go ahead and show you what that sounds like I've got my F chord on I'm gonna speed this up a little bit so we've got one two three four five six seven eight all right so you can hear the kind of rhythm that is kind of making by doing that and so now you just want to add those chord transitions back in so we've got our F chord on one two three four five six seven eight gene all right and then again the place that I like to put this specific strumming pattern is during the bridge okay and so all of this will be at the end of the video I'm going to go through the entire song and show you guys how I would do it in my cover and I'll include all of the strumming patterns that I'm using and I'll have all the lyrics and all the chords and everything on the screen in front of you so if you want to follow along with the way that I would suggest playing it then feel free to do that but like I always say in my videos I think the way that you'll sound the best during your cover is by just doing patterns that feel natural to you so if you don't like the patterns that I've come up with or they don't flow for you or after practicing you just don't feel like you know you get the rhythm of it then definitely go ahead and try practicing a pattern on your own whatever your hand kind of naturally starts doing I would suggest trying to go with that because whenever you do your cover and you're you know busy thinking about the lyrics and things like that you don't want to be thinking too hard about guitar strumming pattern so go ahead and go with whatever you feel most natural doing but with that being said let's go ahead and put everything that we've learned together so once you have the chords memorized you practice transitioning between them and you've done and you've gone through these strumming patterns and feel pretty comfortable with the one that you want to use or all of them if you want to let's go ahead and put all of that together and we'll go through the entire song of the man by Taylor Swift good luck I would become I do read about drinking in dollars and models it's all good if you bet okay if you met if I was a flashing my dollars be a not a bother take me out to be fat so it's okay that I'm mad I'm so sick of running as fast as I can if I get there quicker foul I didn't so that was my tutorial for it's a man by Taylor Swift I really hope that you guys enjoyed it if you did then make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as subscribe to my channel that way you guys know every single time I upload a new video if you have any requests 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liked it and I will see you guys in the next one thanks for watching bye I'd be them