Winter Wonderland by N/A Tutorial/Lesson
Winter Wonderland
C, G7, G, F, Em, Dm, Am, E, A, D7
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Video transcript
so hey everyone my name is ellen and today i'm going to be showing you guys how to play winter wonderland on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you'd like to learn and guys before we begin i just want to give a huge shout out and thank you to my patrons for voting on this song for this month's patreon picks if you want a little bit of voting power in the tutorials that you see here on my channel make sure to check out my patreon page which is linked down below all right guys so this song is going to be pretty beginner friendly if you are new to guitar and trying to find something to perform for the holidays um but i am going to classify as a beginner slash intermediate just because there is a bar chord in here however in the chord section i will show you an alternative fingering for it so that you don't have to play any bar chords let's go ahead and jump into the overview so i have my guitar in standard tuning and today i will not be using a capo now winter wonderland is one of those songs that i feel like is a pretty you know christmas or holiday classic it's been covered by so many artists throughout the year so you can really kind of just make it your own so what i'm going to show you today is just the cords that you can use and the strumming that you can use to play it on the guitar and then you can kind of just experiment with it on your own to kind of make it your own so today i will not be using a capo just to make it easier to teach of course i would suggest to go ahead and experiment with that on your own so that you can see what key you know you're most comfortable singing in and things like that with that being said we also have 10 chords to play through this song like i said one of them is a bar chord which is our f major chord but like i said in the chord section i will show you an alternate fingering so you don't have to bar any chords to play through the entire song and um i wanted to show you two strumming patterns that you can use to play through the entire song so with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the chords all right guys so i've zoomed in so we can take a closer look at these chords like i said there are 10 but we have a few that are kind of optional so let's go ahead and start with c chord which looks like this and sounds like this now this next chord is our g7 chord and this is one of our optional chords but first let's go ahead and try to play it looks like this and it sounds like this now if this is kind of hard for you to play you can always replace that with your regular g chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right then we have our f chord which is going to be a bar chord so that looks like this and sounds like this now this is the only barre chord in the whole song so if bar chords are something that you're struggling with you can do an alternate fingering which looks like this and sounds like this so if you're you know in the stage where you're avoiding bar chords you can definitely play the f instead after that we've got our e minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this next we have our d minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this then we have our a minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this then we've got our e chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we've got our a chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last chord you need to know is our d7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right and those are all the chords you need to know to play through this song alright guys so after you have those chords memorized go ahead and take a few moments to practice transitioning between them this song does move pretty quickly so those transitions are really going to be key in order for you to kind of play it a little more smoothly if that's something you need help with i have a tutorial right here that talks about how to core transition and how to do that a little bit faster and techniques and practice and things like that so check that out if you need to um but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming patterns that i want to show you for this song all right so if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials i do always like to start with a practice pattern which as you can see is just one simple down strum on the v for every chord change this is really great for beginners who are getting used to singing and playing at the same time to get to know where you're going to be expected to do those chord changes while you're singing the song so if you're new to guitar this is what i would suggest starting with all we want to do is one single down strum on the beat so let's go ahead and put our c chord on since that's the first chord in the song you're just going to strum down once then you go to your next chord g7 or g if you want to not play the seven part and then e uh d minor a minor g seven and c so like i said this song does have those transitions move pretty quickly but the purpose of this one down strum pattern is just for you to get used to where those transitions actually occur so let's go ahead and put some singing in this and i will show you what i mean all right so you can already tell just from the one down strum that there are several spots in this song where we're going to be going with those transitions a little bit faster and then other spots where we're going to be holding one chord out so i have different strumming patterns to show you depending on which chord you're on so let's go ahead and jump into the first one which is strumming pattern one so strumming pattern one is going to be the one that you can use throughout most of the song it's down down up up down up and it's going to sound a little something like this all right down down up up down so here it is a few times down down up up down up down down up up down all right awesome so that is the rhythm and like i said it can be applied for the majority of the song except for when the chords are moving a little bit faster but for the beginnings of all the verses this will work out really well so let me go ahead and just put some chords to it to show you we have our c chord on we're gonna just play through this pattern down down up up down all right and here we're going to hold it twice then you go to your next chord g7 and we're going to do it twice again all right so like i said anywhere where you're holding the cord for you know more than one measure that's where you're going to be using this strumming pattern so with our c chord we've got down down up down up twice g7 twice all right so here for this next section the core transitions are going to be much faster so that's what i want to show you is strumming pattern two and as you can see strumming pattern two is very similar to strumming pattern one but we're just cutting it in half so it's just down up so it's the first part of strumming pattern one and we're just cutting off the little tail there and the reason we're gonna cut this in half is because these core transitions are going to go twice as fast here okay so with our g chord on we're going to go down down up then you go to your f chord down down up e minor d minor a minor g7 and then you end on c and go back to strumming pattern one down all right so let's just revisit that again so for all of these chords that are going pretty quickly we're just doing a simple down down up down down that's the whole pattern down down all right so for example we've got g f d minor a minor g seven and z all right so again it's going to take a little bit of practice in getting used to but basically anywhere in the song that you're holding for more than one measure you're going to be doing strumming pattern one which is down down up up down up and then anywhere where those chord transitions are happening a little bit more quickly you're just gonna do strumming pattern two which is the first half of strumming pattern one which is just down down up i will have all of this listed as we play through the song together so no worries there um but with that being said i think you know everything you need to know to play through this song so let's go ahead and jump into the play through this is winter wonderland and sleep oh is i'm walking all right guys sorry about the singing this is actually pretty high for my range so again make sure to experiment with that capo to pick a key that suits your vocal range um but thanks so much for watching that does conclude this tutorial for how to play winter wonderland on the guitar um before i go i just want to say thank you and give a shout out to journey instruments for providing me with this awesome collapsible guitar so it's a travel guitar that you can actually fold in half and put in a backpack store away take with you wherever you're traveling to the hot over the holidays so if this is something that you're interested in maybe purchasing for a musician or a guitar lover or just a music lover in your life then make sure to check out the link that i will put in the description box that is an affiliate link that i have with journey instruments but again thanks to them for letting me use this guitar in this tutorial and another huge shout out to my patrons for voting for this song as a tutorial for my channel and uh with that being said thank you so much for watching i hope you have fun jamming along to this and happy holidays bye