When You Say Nothing At All by Alison Krauss Tutorial/Lesson
When You Say Nothing At All
Dsus2, Asus4, G
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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 When You Say Nothing At All by Alison Krauss on my bamboo GC 36 Indie classical guitar so if you're interested in this model or any of the beautiful designs they have on their other guitars I'll make sure to leave their Link in the description box down below here's a quick overview of everything I'll be teaching in this video today and with that being said let's go ahead and get started all right guys so you only need to know three different chord shapes to play through this entire song and we're going to start with our D suspended 2 which looks like this and sounds like this and by the way if you don't know how to read these chord charts your sing on screen I Do cover how to do that in my free beginner course right here in YouTube so make sure check that out the next chord shape is our a suspended four and then the last chord shape is our G major and those are the only three chords you need to know to play through this song so go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to memorize these chord shapes as well as practice transitioning back and forth between them cuz it'll make learning the rest of the song so much easier for you and if this is a skill you're currently struggling with I do have an entire practice with me playlist right here on YouTube where we go through this skill in real time together so I'll make sure to link that playlist in the corner here um but once you have those chords under your belt we can go ahead and talk about the strumming pattern that I would suggest for this song all right guys as always before we dive into the full strumming pattern if you are a beginner or you're somebody who struggles with playing guitar while singing at the same time the first thing I would suggest you do is to bring up the song and go ahead and play through it with a single down strum on every chord change as you sing through the song and just take this time to really get used to what word you're singing what syllable you're on when those chords are changing and this will help later on when we add a more full strumming pattern so here's a quick example of what that would look like with the beginning it's amazing how you can speak right to my heart all right so that's just a quick example but you would essentially want to do that for the entire song and just get used to how those chords are changing whenever those words are coming in and this 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 for you but once you've done that and you're used to those core transitions then we can go ahead and talk about a more full strumming pattern that I would recommend for this song all right guys so for this strumming Rhythm we're GNA keep it very simple we're counting in an eighth note count so it's going to sound like this we have 1 and 2 and three and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and four and 1 and two and three and four and down down up down down up down down up all right super simple um and what we're going to do is I'm going to go ahead and actually put a vertical line right in the middle here and what this is going to represent is where we want to change chords so basically what we want to do is take this pattern and we're going to play it one time through per chord pairing throughout the song so let's go ahead and look at the first verse just as an example you see here we're starting on our D supended two so you would play the left half of this pattern so we have down down up on our D supended two then you go to your a suspended four and finish out the pattern down down up all right right next measure would go to G back to a suspended 4 down down up all right so essentially each of these chords is getting like a half measure so if we put that all together it would sound like this we've got d a g a back and forth just like that and this is going to be basically the whole song It's a amazing how you can speak right to my heart without saying a word you can light up the door all right so just like that it's going to follow that same pattern and you could use the same strumming pattern for the whole song song really quick let's take a look at the chorus it's going to follow exactly the same pattern as our verses so we have d a g a this smile on your face let me know that you need me there's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me all right so if you do want to strum this song you could apply this pattern for the entire song I think it sounds pretty good um however I personally like to play this song with some finger picking it is a little closer to the original so um if you don't want to do strumming then let's go ahead and talk about the finger picking version that you can play all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get the strumming Rhythm under your belt it's a fairly simple Rhythm so if you're a beginner at the guitar I would definitely recommend this pattern and this is a good song to practice it with however like I said I do like to finger pick through this song when I play it so let's go ahead and talk about the picking pattern that 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 all right guys so before we begin I do want to show you how I number my Strings On My Guitar from six on the low E string all the way to 543 21 on the high E string at the bottom here um that's just going to help with orientation as I teach you how to fingerpick this song the great thing about it is there's only those three chords right so if you learn the picking pattern on your right hand for each of those chords then you just have to practice it a lot until you get it kind of like muscle memory and then the whole song should come together pretty nicely so let's go ahead and break down each of these chords on our Des supended two chord what you want to do is take your thumb put that on the fourth D string then you're going to have your pointer middle and ring finger on the bottom three strings here okay so basically what you want to do is just go down the guitar we're going to go thumb pointer middle ring just straight down like that all right then for your a suspended four you're going to do the same thing except now we're taking all of our fingers and we're shifting them up one string each okay so now your thumbs on the fifth string pointers on Fourth middles on Third and your ring fingers on the second string and then again we're just going straight down the guitar 5 4 3 2 okay then our last chord here is our G and so basically now you're going to take your thumb move that to the sixth string string but you're going to keep your pointer middle and ring on the middle strings like we have for a suspended so you're going to go 6 4 3 2 just down the guitar just like we have been doing all right and the whole song basically goes d a g a so after you do the G you would go back to your a chord and remember to move your thumb back to that fifth string so that's how you're going to finger pick all of these cords with your right hand at this point what you want to do is just get used to changing those fingers around when you're on your different chords so we have D suspended to a suspended to G back to a all right once you get the coordination down for your right hand and you know which strings to pick then the whole thing should come together pretty fast after that because we're just going to repeat it over and over for basically the entire song so we've got d a g a just like this for almost the whole song it's amazing how you can speak right to my heart all right and again same thing with the chorus the smile on your face lets me know that you need me there's a truth in your eyes saying you never leave me sorry about the singing this song is so high for me um but basically if you can memorize the picking pattern on your right hand for each of these chords it'll be super easy to apply it to the whole song now one thing I wanted to add here which is a little bit more advanced if you're up for it is on our a suspended chord something that you'll hear throughout this song is they'll have kind of a frill so what I would recommend doing is we're going to take our a suspended four and on our ring finger you're just going to slide that down so that they're all on the second fret that's our regular a major chord and so when you do the pattern d a g a the second time you do the a I would recommend doing a normal a so we have D suspended to a suspended to G and then here on this last a I would recommend going to your regular a major chord so here how that last note is different as you pick it we're going to hammer on with our Pinky the third fret okay so the whole thing would be like this a hammer on okay it is a little bit more difficult especially if you don't have that pinky strength CU we don't really use that finger a lot um another way you could do this is on your a chord instead of having all three of your fingers smushed into one fret like that you could actually take your pointer finger and either bar those three strings and then you can hammer on with your ring finger or you could do your first two fingers and like on my middle finger I'll sometimes flatten it out normally we always teach to Arch your fingers for cord shapes but on this one you could flatten your middle finger so it covers both those strings and you could hammer on with your ring finger okay so whichever way you think is easier there're all different ways to play that little frill and of course this whole thing is super optional but I do think it'll sound really close to the original if you can add that in so now we have and then you just keep going in a cycle like that and it just repeats for the whole song it's amazing how you can speak right to my heart um but basically that is how you could fingerpick this song and like I said if you learn these three chord shapes you could apply it for the whole song and the finger picking pattern would be the same through the whole song all right guys so again go ahead and pause the video and take as much time as you need to get these finger picking patterns under your belt there's only the three chord so as soon as you can get that muscle memory going for your right hand for the picking pattern the whole song I promised will come together so quickly after that so make sure to just pause on the screen and take as much time as you need to practice that um but once you have that under your belt we can put together everything we've learned in this video today to play through the song 1 2 ready go it's amazing how you can speak right to my heart without saying a word you can light up the dark Want to Have Fun jamming 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 FastTrack and playalong 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 it have a super similar sound and Vibe but it's just as fun and easy to play so I'll see you over there bye