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We Can't Stop by Miley Cyrus Tutorial/Lesson

We Can't Stop

C, Em, Am, F

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Video transcript
hi my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play We Can't Stop by Miley Cyrus on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you're interested in learning o yeah so we can knock this song out really quickly today because it's super simple and there's only four chords in the entire song and they repeat themselves in the same order for the whole thing so I'll go ahead and teach you guys what those chords are everywhere all right so like I said there's only four chords in this entire song and they repeat themselves in the exact same order so it's pretty easy to learn and by the way you're going to need your Capo on the fourth fret if you want to sing this in the same key as Miley Cyrus if not you can play these exact same chords and everything and it'll sound fine except that it'll be a little bit lower than in her music video so let's go ahead and jump into the chords the first chord you're going to need to know is C which looks like this and sounds like this okay after that you need to know E minor which looks like this and sounds like this next you need to know a minor and you're just going to move your two fingers down one string and then add your first finger on so that's a minor and it looks like this and sounds like this and the very last chord you need to know is f and it's a B chord and it looks like this and it sounds like this and if this first bar is a little bit hard for you then go ahead and an alternate fingering is just to take your first finger place it on the first fret of your B string so you're going to be ignoring like the bar part of it and it'll look like this and sound like this and sorry if my chords sound a little weird I am in the process of moving and I left all of my guitar stuff back in my old place so I had to cut a library card in order to make a pick so anyways just a little fun fact for you guys all right once you have those chords memorized go ahead and try to transition between them exactly in that order because that's what we're going to do for the whole song so we go from C to E minor to a minor to f and once you get those chord transitions down then you'll be able to play through the whole song so let's go ahead and look at some strumming patterns so as always I would suggest starting off with a practice pattern which is just playing one downstroke for each chord once on the beat so we have C E Minor A Min minor and F Red Cups and sweaty bodies everywhere hands in the air like we don't care cuz have so much fun now got somebody here my get some now and you kind of just want to go through that pattern and play through the entire song Just so you know where those cord transitions are going to be and also just to give yourself a little bit more practice transitioning between those chords and once you have that down pat then we can go ahead and start into our first strumming pattern so the first strumming pattern is super simple so all you want to do is instead of playing each chord once on a downstroke you're going to play each chord eight times on all downst Strokes so we have C 5 6 7 8 e minor 2 3 4 5 6 7 88 minor F C minor and you can use this pattern throughout the entire song Red cuts and swey bodies everywhere hands in the air like we don't care cuz we came to have so much fun now got somebody here I get some now sorry that Rhythm always messes me up but once you get that down we can go ahead and start into strumming pattern two which is this pattern right here and you may recognize this from some of my other tutorials it's very versatile and it works just as well in this song so we have down down down up up down so go ahead and put your c chord on and we can practice through this pattern we have down down down down up up down down down up up down and then all you have to do is put in your chord transitions so we have C E minor a minor f and for this particular pattern sometimes after I do the last up down so I have down down down up up down sometimes without thinking about it I go back and do down up to lead into the next pattern that's just something that comes naturally to me so if you want to add that in there that's great but um this is the general pattern so let's go ahead and play through this pattern with the beginning Ooh Yeah o oo ooh yeah now let's go ahead and start into our third strumming pattern this one is a little bit more detailed than the first two so here's the pattern and it's down down up down up up down down up and I know that the sounds kind of confusing but actually it's really close to what we just played we're just adding a couple more different rhythms in there so let's go ahead and see what this sounds like if you have your c chord on we have down down down up down up up down down up down down down up down up down down down up down up up down up now if this is a little bit difficult of course you can stick with the previous strumming pattern but um this is just something that gives it a little bit more of a richer sound so if you want to try this out then go ahead so um let's go ahead and add in those chord Transitions and see what this sounds like C some sweaty bodies everywhere hands in the air like we don't care CU we came to have so much fun now got somebody get gosh I keep messing up that rhythm I'm so sorry but um you get the idea of how this strumming pattern sounds so now I'm just going to offer you guys one last strumming pattern this is the most detailed strumming pattern if you will um but it is again very similar to the one we just played so it goes down down up down up down down down up that's a lot of information so let's go ahead and practice that by putting our c chord on and let me show you what it sounds like we just have down down down down up down up down down up let's do that one more time down down up down up down down down up I feel like this Rhythm sounds the most close to Miley's song so if you want to try this out then definitely go ahead but I'm going to go ahead and move on and we're going to add in those chord transitions to see what it sounds like Al together so we have C E minor a minor f o o so of course I've offered you a lot of different strumming patterns if some of these later ones were a little bit too difficult then by all means go ahead and stick with the one that you're most comfortable with or of course make up your own strumming pattern that you think sounds great with the song cuz that's always the best thing to do in my opinion so it'll come more naturally to you and you can sing and play at the same time without too much difficulty but um again go ahead and practice through whatever strumming pattern you'd like to use for this song I'll try to use a variation when I do my little cover at the end just to show you guys how you can kind of spice up your song with different strumming patterns but whenever you're ready let's go ahead and put together all of our chords and strumming and everything I'll list all of the lyrics in front of you and we will play through the entire song of We Can't Stop by Miley that life We Can't Stop we won't o yeah red cups and sweaty bodies everywhere hands in the air like we don't care cuz came to have so much fun now somebody here might get now if you're not ready to go home can I get a hell no cuz it's going to go all night till we see the sunight all right we like to party do it doing whatever we want this is our house this is our rules We Can't Stop and we won't stop can't you see it's we who own the night can't you see it's we who B that life We Can't Stop we won't stop we run things things don't run we won't take nothing from nobody yeah who o yeah to my home girls here with the big trying like we're at a strip CL remember Only God can judge you forget the haters Somebody Loves You everyone in line in the bathroom try to get a line in the bathroom we are so TI we like toy dancing with doing whatever we want this is our house this is our rules We Can't Stop we won't stop can't you see it way who on the night can't you see it's we who B that life We Can't Stop we won't stop we run things things don't R we don't take nothing from nobody yeah yeah it's all party we can do what we want to it's our house we can love what we want to it's our song we can sing if we want to my mouth I can say what I want to yeah yeah yeah we can't stop we won't stop can't you see it's me who all good night did you see it's we who brought that light We Can't Stop we won't stop we run things things don't run we won't nothing from nobody yeah oo o yeah all right great job you guys just played through We Can't Stop by Miley Cyrus sorry about all the mistakes in there I haven't really listened to this song too much and um so I'm not really familiar with the rhythms and stuff but I tried my best for you guys and I hope that you found this tutorial helpful make sure to please check out this playlist if you want to see more tutorials just like this one that are very basic and um just kind of more simple and then watch this playlist right here if you found this one a little bit easy and you want to challenge yourself more and you want some more detailed tutorials then that would be a great playlist to check out and as I always say if you found this helpful please don't forget to like it down below and subscribe to my channel so that you know every single time I upload a new tutorial for you guys um yeah thanks again for watching I hope this helped keep rocking and I'll see you guys next time bye yeah

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