Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift Tutorial/Lesson
Wildest Dreams
C, Em, D, G, Am
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Video transcript
hi my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn so to play this song in the original key that Taylor Swift sings it in you will need to put your Capo on the first fret if you don't have one you can play this entire song without one and it'll just be a half step lower than Taylor Swift sings it I can't get over how simple this song is there's only five chords in the whole song and I only have two strumming patterns to show you guys so uh let's go ahead and get started with the does it so well I can see the end as it begin all right so like I said there's only five chords you need to know for the whole song and the first one is C which looks like this and sounds like this and then after that you need to know E minor which looks like this and sounds like this then you need to know D which looks like this and sounds like this then you need to know G which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is a minor which looks like this and sounds like this and there you have it those are the five chords you need to know to play the song All right so once you have all of those chords memorized and you can transition between them then let's go ahead and move on to the strumming patterns that I've come up with wild dreams so usually this is the part of the tutorial where I tell you the first strumming pattern which is the pr practice pattern which is just one downstroke on each chord on the down beat but instead of this being just a practice pattern I'm actually going to be using it throughout the song as pattern number one so let's go ahead and see what this sounds like if you put your c chord on that's the first chord in the song and all we're going to do is we're going to play each chord once with a downstroke so we have C E minor D and then you let D ring for a while C E minor D and I'm using it all downstrokes he said let's get out of this town drive out of the city away from the grounds I thought Heaven Help me now nothing forever sorry as you can tell this song is really low and really high for my voice but um that's just how simple the first strumming pattern is so you want to go ahead and do that for the whole song so you know where all those cord transitions are going to be and then once you have all those transitions down I'm going to teach you a cool fast way to dress up this strumming pattern and all we're going to be doing for it is after you strum the downstroke on each chord I'm just taking my middle finger and I'm tapping right on my guitar underneath the sound hole and it leaves this kind of deep ringing like sound I don't know I think it mimics the song pretty well because at the beginning all you really hear is that orchestral part with the beat so I think that this song is going to be really important for you to keep rhythm as much as it is to know the chords because a lot of this song is very static with the chords but what gives it a little bit of difference between the verses and the choruses and stuff is the Rhythm so now let's go ahead and add two of those Taps right after every chord that we strum down with so we have C and then now I'm going to add those Taps and then we go to E minor Taps and then D and then for D since we hold it out twice as long we're going to do four taps okay so let me do that a little faster we have C E minor d again so you can already start to hear how our tapping is kind of mimicking the Rhythm in the song now if you want to you could use this strumming pattern for the entire song I think it actually sounds pretty good that way but just in case you want to make a little bit of a difference between the verses and the choruses I'll go ahead and show you another strumming pattern so here it is my next next pattern it's very simple it's just down down down up and what I like to do is I like to use this for all of the choruses so if you put your G chord on that's the first chord in our chorus and we're going to play down down up down down down up okay why don't you practice that with me down down down up down down down up down down down down up down down down up pretty simple right now all we have to do is add in those chord transitions so we're going to go g down down up D down down up a minor down down up C down down up see you remember me standing in a nice dress staring at the sunset bab red lips and Rosy Cheeks say you'll see me again it's just your now if you watch a lot of my tutorials you'll notice that I don't usually use a pick just because I prefer using my thumb and picking on the guitar with my fingers but but in this particular song I actually think it sounds better if you don't use the pick because then the chords there's something different about when you play with your thumb versus when you play with a pck with a p it's a little bit more attacked and I think it just sounds a little bit better if you use your thumb if you can if you can weather through the pain and make sure that you get that callous formed um I would just suggest using your thumb to make it a little bit softer to mimic the song because the song is a little bit softer all right so once you have all of the chords memorized and you have the different strumming patterns down and you've chosen which ones you'd like to use then let's go ahead and play through the whole song and I will list all of the lyrics and chord changes and everything in front of you as well as what strumming patterns I'll be using in this top Corner um so yeah whenever you're ready let's continue and play through Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift good luck just in your wild dreams he said let's get out of this town drive out of the city away from the crows I thought Heaven can help me now nothing lasts forever but this is going to take me down he's so tall and handsome as hell he's so bad but he does it so well I can see the end as it begins my one condition is say you remember me standing in a nice dress staring at the sunset babe red lips and Rosy Cheeks say you'll see me again even if it's just in your wildest dreams wildest dreams I say no one to know what we do his hands are in my ha his clothes are in my room and his voice is a familiar sound nothing lasts forever but this is getting good now he's so tall and handsome as hell he's so bad but he does it so well and when we've had our very last kiss my last request is see you remember me standing in a nice dress staring at the sunset bab red lips and Rosy Cheeks say you'll see me again even if it's just in your wildest dreams wild dreams you'll see me in hindsight Tangled Up you all night burning in down someday when you leave me I'll bet these memories follow you around you see me in hindsight tangled up with you all night burning it down somay when you leave me I'll bet these memories follow you around follow you around say standing in a niess staring at the sunet Babe red lips and Rosy Cheeks say you'll see me again even if it's just pretend me standing in a nice dress staring at the sunset babe red lips and Rosy Cheeks say you'll see me again even if it's just in your wildest dreams in your wildest dreams haa just in your world the streams in yourest dreams so thank you guys so much for watching my tutorial I hope that I was able to help you even if it was just a little bit and again I apologize for my singing this song is really low and really high for me me so it's not really within my range but I tried my best for you guys and um if you are still in the guitar playing mood then feel free to click on one of these playlists and it'll take you to all of the other tutorials that I've made so far and also if you want to you can follow me on any of my social media sites and I'm really excited because my YouTube channel just reached over 250,000 subscribers that is a quarter of a million subscribers which is just amazing like I can't even explain to you how excited I am about that so I'm thinking about doing something special for you guys soon so stay tuned for that and um yeah again thanks so much for watching I really hope it helped and I'll see you guys in my next video bye in yourest dreams