What Was I Made For by Billie Eilish Tutorial/Lesson
What Was I Made For
C, Em, Fmaj7, Am, Dm7, G7
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Video transcript
foreign it's Ellen here and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play what was I made for by Billy eilish 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 get started alright guys so we only have six chord shapes to play through this song and we're going to start with our C major which looks like this and sounds like this laughs 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 my free beginner course right here on YouTube so make sure to check that out the next chord shape is our E minor we also have our F major seven then there's our a minor chord next is our D minor seven and then the last chord shape is our G7 and those are the six chords you need to know to play for this song Alright 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 because it will make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you and if this is a skill that you're currently struggling with I would suggest checking out my practice with me Series where we go through the skill in real time together but once you come back we can talk a little bit about the strumming for this song So if you are new to playing guitar or you struggle with singing and playing at the same time the first thing I would suggest is to go ahead and pull up the song and use a single down strum to play through each chord as you sing through the song and just take this time to make a mental note of what word you're singing whenever those chords are changing so here's a quick example of what that would look like I used to flow now I just fall down I Used to Know but I'm not sure now what I was made for what was I mean all right so you would basically want to do that for the entire song and just make sure you know what word you're singing whenever those chords are 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'll make sure to leave that link in the description box down below um but once you have that under your belt we can go ahead and talk about more of a full strumming pattern for this song so because the nature of the song is so soft and simplistic I would definitely stick with a very basic strumming pattern so as you can see my suggestion is down down up down down up so let's go ahead and zoom in and talk a little bit more about this Rhythm alright guys so we are going to be in a simple eighth note pattern today so basically that's going to count like this we have one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and down down up down down up and you could basically use this for the entire song because like I said it's very um soft sounding so you don't want to go too crazy with the strumming um so I'm going to go ahead and put a vertical line here in the middle as well and this is just gonna wrap represent where we're going to occasionally change chords so some of these chords are going to get like a half measure whereas others are going to get a full measure so for an example of this let's go ahead and look at the first verse you can see here we're going from C to E minor to F major seven so basically the way you would apply this strumming pattern is for the C to E minor you would break the strumming pattern in half so on the left half we have C down down up and then on the right half we have E minor down down up then for the F major seven you would play through the entire measure so no vertical line down down up down all right so just keep in mind wherever you want to change those chords in the middle there so without stopping for the verse we have C to F major seven see minor now I just fall down all right and basically if you did want to strum through this song this is what I would recommend so for the chorus it would be exactly the same thing I don't know how to feel but sometimes all right so that's how you would apply this strumming pattern for the entire song and I think it sounds pretty good so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really internalize this strumming Rhythm that way it'll be easier to sing on top of it later but as much fun as it is to strum through the song I do think it kind of screams for more of a picking pattern because it does sound a little softer so when you get back I will go ahead and show you a beautiful little picking pattern that you can use for this song Hey really quick in addition to the printable guide we've been looking at did you know I also offer customizable backing tracks polls for What songs you want to learn next and even video chats if you're having trouble you can unlock all these perks and more if you become a patron which helps me grow my channel and make more videos just like this one or if patreon's not your thing you can still help me out a lot by giving me a thumbs up and leaving a comment below to help me reach more people in YouTube's recommendations it only takes a second but makes a huge difference so thanks so much and let's get back into it alright guys so let's go ahead and break down this finger picking pattern before we start let's talk about our right hand or the hand you're using to pick the strings I want you to go ahead and assign your pointer your middle and your ring finger to the bottom three strings the g b and e strings okay and then your thumb is going to move around based on the chord we're playing and it's going to cover the bass string so it'll either be on the E string the a string or the D string all right so once we put our left hand chord shape on so for instance let's start with our c chord since that's the first chord in the song what you want to do is pick the bass note first with your thumb so fifth string then you're going to take your pointer and pick the third string G then you're going to take your middle and your ring finger and pick both the bottom strings B and high e at the same time and then come back to your pointer so the full patterns like this all right and that pattern is going to be the same for the other chords as well so looking at our E minor chord your thumb moves to the low E string the sixth string but other than that it's the same foreign all right let's go ahead and skip over to our a minor chord that's going to go back to your fifth string for your thumb and then for our F major seven chord I'm going to show you two different ways to play this and it's going to depend on what part of the song you're in so if you put your F major seven chord on you can apply the same pattern all right but most of the song because it ends the phrase what I would actually do is take that last note off and just end it kind of more open-ended like that and so basically for most of the song in the verses you would go from C to E minor to F major seven but just let it like ring out like that okay so now let's go ahead and take a look at our D minor seven and our G7 chords because this is going to be a little bit different with the picking pattern so what I would do for D minor seven is you're going to put your thumb on the fourth string and then instead of picking any of these at the same time we're going to pick all of these strings individually so we have four three two three one three two three so this is when that coordination in your right hand is really going to come in handy oh that's why you want to assign your right hand fingers to a string and then your G7 chord is going to follow that exact same pattern except this time your thumb is on the sixth low E string all right so those two seventh chords are going to be a little bit different than the rest of them so basically if I go through verse two you'll see how all of this is applied taken Drive I was I do so alive just something you paid for what was I made for me and then for the course you'd go back to that first picking pattern I don't know how to feel all right so for most of the song The picking you can use is just the C E minor F major seven progression the only time that it changes is that the ends of those verses going into the chorus which we just played through but yeah basically that is the picking pattern that I would suggest for this song I think it sounds really beautiful and really matches the original song really well alright guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to really get these finger picking patterns under your belt if this is something that you're new to doing it can take a little bit of extra brain power to get that coordination down so don't get discouraged just keep practicing it slowly and then slowly speed it up but once you have the under your belt we can put everything together to play through the song one two ready go I used to flow now I just fall down I used to know but I'm not sure what I was made for what was I made for want to have fun playing through the rest of the 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 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 that 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