Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day Tutorial/Lesson
Wake Me Up When September Ends
G, D/F#, Em, D, C, Cm, Bm, Dsus4
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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 Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day on the guitar. And today I am featuring my Journey Instruments OF440 travel guitar, which is one of my coolest guitars cuz you can actually collapse it and put it in a backpack and have it travel with you. So if you are interested in this model or any of their other travel guitars, I will definitely link them in the description box below. I also want to give a quick shout out and thank you to my patrons over on my Patreon page for voting on this song as this month's patron pick. So, if you would like a little bit of voting power in the 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's 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, we have eight 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 in 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 chord. There's also our D major chord. Next is our C major. We also have our C minor. There's our B minor. And then the last chord is our D suspended four. However, I will tell you that this is kind of an optional chord because we only use it once in the song in the bridge. Um, so if you don't like your D suspended four, you can always just play your regular D for that. Um, but those are the A chord shapes 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. That way, it'll make it a lot more easy to learn the rest of this song. And if transitioning between your chords fast enough is a skill you're currently struggling with, I do have an entire practice with me series right here on YouTube where we build this up in real time together. So, I'll link that in the corner if you're interested. But once you have these chords under your belt, then we can go ahead and talk about the strumming that you can use 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 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. The inocent can never last. 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. And this actually something to 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 leave that link in the description box. But once you've done that and you're comfortable with those chord changes, then we can go ahead and add to the single downstrum to create more of a full strumming pattern that you can use for this song. All right, guys. So, for today for strumming, as you can see, we're keeping it pretty simple with just all downstrums. We're going to count this in an eighth note count. So, it's going to sound like this. We have 1 and 2 and 3 and four and down down All right, pretty simple. And what we're going to do is play through this pattern one time through per chord throughout the song. So let's go ahead and take a look at that first verse as an example. We're starting here on our G chord. You want to just keep this G chord going for the entire measure. So we have 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Then switch to your next chord, D over F sharp. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and to E minor to D. All right. And basically this strumming pattern you can use to play through the entire song. Now something you'll want to add to it to kind of give it more of that rhythmic feel is we're going to add some accents. So basically what accents are is we're just going to strum some of these beats with a little bit extra emphasis. So, I'm going to turn some of these arrows green. And these green arrows represent the beats that I want you to accent. Okay. So, with accenting, let's go ahead and put our G chord on. When you're accenting a strum, you basically want to strum all the strings and give it a little bit of an emphasis. All right? And then for all of the purple arrows or non-acented strums, you can kind of concentrate more on just either the top or the middle strings. So, it's like less of a wide motion with strumming. Okay. So, we've got 1 and 2 and 3 and four and. So, hopefully you can hear the difference between the accents and the non-acents. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. All right. If you can keep these accents going throughout the song, it'll really help give this guitar part more of a rhythmic feel, which is really good for this song. And then the other thing I wanted to address is sometimes we are going to have to split the measure between two chords. So I'm going to go ahead and add a vertical line here in the middle. And basically what this represents is some places where we're going to have to change chords here in the middle of the measure. Okay. So a good example of that would be in the chorus here. We're going from our E minor full measure. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and to B minor. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and to C. And then here we're going from G to our D over F sharp. And each of these is going to have half the pattern because we have a split measure. So G gets the left half. 1 and 2 and. Then you go to D over F#arp. Finish it out. 3 and 4 and. All right. So, for the chorus, we've got E minor, E minor to C to G for half to D for half. All right. So, throughout the song, you'll see places where we do have to split the measure. I have all of this marked on my guide that I have on my Patreon page if you're interested. Um, but other than that, we would want to keep this entire strumming pattern for each chord. So, let's go ahead and just kind of play through a little bit of it so you can hear how it sounds. So speeding it up just a little bit, the verses would sound like this. Summer has come and pass. Wake me up when September ends. Two measures for this G. All right. And then an example of the chorus. pain again. Falling stars in my pain again coming. All right. So, basically, if you wanted to strum through this song, you could use this all downstrum pattern to play through the entire thing. Um, my suggestion is if you are going to try the fingerpicking version of this song or that solo tab and things like that, the place that I would actually add the strumming pattern in is going to be certain lines throughout the second verse to the end of the song. So again, I have all of this listed on my guide where to play what and things like that. But if you're just at the strumming level, you could totally play through this entire song with just the strumming pattern. All right, guys. So go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this strumming pattern under your belt. Make sure you understand the rhythm and how to do those accents and things like that. If you're just comfortable with strumming, you can go ahead and play through the song here. But there are a few more ways that I wanted to show you guys how to play this song that sound a little more accurate to the original, which is a fingerpicking pattern as well as a solo tab. So, let's go ahead and talk about the fingerpicking pattern next. All right, guys. So, before we jump into breaking down this finger picking pattern, I do just want to go over a couple of rules first. First of all, I do like to number my guitar strings from six as the low E, 5 4 3 2 1 all the way to the high E or the bottom string, which is one. So, I will be referring to these strings as numbers for this portion of the tutorial. Um, also, our left hand is just going to be remaining the same. You're just going to keep holding these same chord shapes down that we've been using throughout this tutorial already. And then on our right hand, this is the most important part. We do want to assign these fingers to these strings so that when we're practicing through these different picking patterns, your right hand's going to have kind of a guide to follow. Okay? So, basically what I want you to do is take your pointer, your middle, and your ring finger, and we're going to assign these to the bottom three strings, the G, the B, and the E. And they're going to stay here throughout this picking pattern. Okay? The only finger that should be moving is your thumb. Your thumb is going to cover the base or root note of every chord shape. Okay? Okay. So, your thumb is going to be moving around a bit. So, for example, on our G chord, the bass or root note or like lowest note in this chord shape is our E string or six. Okay? But your pointer, middle, and ring are going to stay here on the bottom three. So, that's going to be true throughout the rest of this portion of the tutorial. Okay? So, with those rules out of the way, let's go ahead and talk about and break down this picking pattern. Basically, what you're going to do, we're going to start here with our G chord. You're going to pick the bass note, so that sixth string. Then come in with your pointer finger for the third string. And then you're going to pick your middle and your ring finger together. So two and one are together. Okay? And that's the picking pattern. So we've got bass 3 2 and one. And you want to do that twice. All right. So you can kind of hear it sounding a little bit like the song. Now when I was listening to the song, something else that I think they do sometimes if you want to add it in is after you do this, you can come back with your index finger and just play that G string again, the three. Okay? So the whole picking pattern is 6 3 2 1 6 3 2 1 3. Okay. And just, you know, make sure to pause and make sure you understand this uh pattern because it will apply to the rest of the chords as well. So for G, we've got Okay, there's a little bit of a pause before that last note is picked. You can think of it as a lead in to the next measure. For our D over F sharp, this is going to be exactly the same as our G chord. So, we've got 6 3 2 1 6 3 2 1 and then 3. Okay. E minor is the same as well. And now here we're on our D chord. This is the first time that our right hand is going to change a little. Okay? Because for the D chord, the bass or root note is going to be your fourth D string. So, your thumb's going to move from six to four. But the basics of the pattern is the same. So, we're going to go 4 3 2 and 1. Do that twice and then come back with your index finger. Okay. And that's kind of the first little phrasing there. So, let's play all that together. We've got G to D over F sharp to E minor to D. All right. So, let's go ahead and go over some of these other chords. Now, we're here on our C major chord. Same thing, we go five because now our bass or our root note is this fifth A string. So, for C, we have 5 3 2 1 5 3 2 1 3. Okay, C minor is exactly the same. 5 3 2 1 5 3 2 1 3. Okay. And those are the two new chords in the next section here. So for that next line, we've got C to C minor back to G. And this G gets twice. All right. So that's basically the um order of the chords for all of the verses. So let's go ahead and play through all these chords without stopping so you can hear how it comes together. We've got G to D over F sharp, E minor to D to C, C minor, G twice. Summer has come and passed. The inocent can never last. Wake me up when September ends. All right. Good. And so, just remember, the hardest part of this picking pattern is going to get that finger coordination down in your right hand. And so pause whenever you need to really get used to this pattern cuz like I said, you can use it for the entire song. Also remember your thumb is going to be the only finger moving around strings. So just be careful of that too. Let's go ahead and look at the chorus now. We're starting here on our E minor chord. 6 3 2 1. B minor is a new one here. So B minor, the bass note is going to be this fifth or A string. So we have 5 3 2 1 5 3 2 1 3. Okay. And the rest of these chords we're familiar with. Again, just like with strumming, the G to the D over F sharp is going to be a split measure. So the way we're going to switch this around with finger picking is on our first chord G, we're going to go bass 3 2 1. And then come back with your index finger and pick that middle string again. So we've got 6 3 2 1 3. Then switch chords to your D over F sharp. Same thing. 6 3 2 1 3. All right. So this is the only measure that's a little bit different with the picking pattern. So both together we've got G D over F sharp. Okay. So with the whole chorus, we've got E minor, B minor, C, split measure, G, D over F sharp. All right. And that's how you can play through the choruses. Here comes the rain again, falling from the stars. D drenched in my pain again. Becoming who we are. All right. And basically this finger picking pattern you can use throughout the entire song as well. What I like to do is I will do a combination of this finger picking pattern with the strumming that I showed you earlier with that iconic kind of like solo tab that you hear at the beginning of the song and also throughout. So, um, let's go ahead and take this one step further and talk about that solo tab. All right, guys. So, again, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get this fingerpicking pattern under your belt. I know it can be a lot of information cuz there's a lot of chords in this song, but I promise once you get the basic pattern down and you have that muscle memory of your fingers and the ability to kind of maneuver them individually, I promise the whole thing will come together because the song is pretty repetitive after that. Um, but like I said, the solo tab is probably the most iconic part of this song and it's actually super easy to play. So, let's go ahead and talk about that next. All right, guys. So, last of all, I wanted to show you that solo tap you hear at the beginning and throughout the song. Fun fact, this is actually the very first like kind of guitar riff that I ever learned, and it's actually super easy to play. So, as you can see at the top of the screen, I have the tab listed out. If you don't know how to read tabs, I do have a separate video on how to do that. So, I'll link that in the corner if you need it. So, I like to finger pick this song. So, I'm going to go ahead and suggest to you what fingers to use for this tab. What I like to do is I'll use my ring finger here on the fifth fret of the D string. and my index finger here on the third fret of the B string. And the middle string, the G, is just open. And on my right hand, what I like to do is use my thumb and then my index and then my middle. Okay? So, we have 53. And you basically just want to do that twice. All right. From here in the next measure, you're just going to take your ring finger off and replace that with your middle finger. So, we're just going down one fret here. So, your middle finger is on the fourth fret of the D string, but the rest of it's the same. We have 43 Okay. Now, from here, for the next measure, I would recommend changing your hand position. So, we're going to let go of our strings. So, I like to use my first finger here on the second fret of the D string, and my ring finger here on the third fret of the B string. Okay. So, we have 23 twice. Okay. And then last, you just want to let go of your index finger and we're going to have open open three. And again twice. All right. And that's the entire solo tab. It's so easy to play. So, let's go ahead and string all of it together. We've got 503 to 403. Change your hand. 203 to 03. Nice. And from here, if you were playing through the song, this is where I would switch back into that finger picking pattern that I showed you earlier. All right. So, the whole thing would sound like this with the verse. We've got G, D over F sharp, E minor to D to C, C minor to G twice. Then from here, I would go back into that little solo tab. All right. And that's how you would play through the verses. Let me go ahead and add some singing so you can hear how it all comes together. Summer has come and passed. The inocent can never last. Wake me up when September ends. Here's that split measure into the chorus. Comes the rain again. All right. And that would be picking throughout the rest of that chorus. And then, like I said, throughout the song, starting in the second verse, we are going to kind of pick up the um energy of the song, the drums come in and things like that. That's when I would go back to strumming as well. Like I said, I do have all of this listed like what portions of the song to play in what ways on my guide on my Patreon page. So, definitely check it out if you're interested. Um, but yeah, that is how you can play the solo tab that you hear throughout the song. All right, guys. So, one last time, go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get this solo tab under your belt. This is one of the easier riffs to learn as a guitar. So, I would definitely recommend trying it out. Um, but once you have this under your belt, we can go ahead and put everything we've learned in this tutorial together, the chords, transitions, strumming, picking tabs, all of that to play through the song. One, two, ready, go. Summer has come and passed. The inocent can never last. Wake me up when September ends. Want to have fun jamming up to 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 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.