With or Without You by U2 Tutorial/Lesson
With or Without You
G, D, Em, C
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Video transcript
do hey everyone my name is ellen and today i'm going to be showing you guys how to play with or without you by you two on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something you'd like to learn and before we start i just want to give a huge shout out to all my patrons on my patreon page for voting for this song as this month's patron picks if you want a little bit of voting power in what songs you see on my channel make sure to check out my patreon page linked below all right guys this one's going to be super beginner friendly so i'm really excited to show it to you first of all make sure your guitar is in standard tuning and go ahead and put your capo on the seventh fret this is gonna make it in the same key as the original song and it's going to let us play the most easy chord shapes that we can speaking of which you only need to know four chords to play through the entire song and none of them are barre chords so they're super beginner friendly and i'm going to show you two strumming patterns today although it's kind of a choose your own adventure because i would only suggest using one or the other but we'll get to that in the strumming portion so let's go ahead and jump into the tutorial and we'll start with the chords all right guys so like i said you only need to know four chords to play through this song and the first one is g which looks like this and sounds like this next we have our d chord which looks like this and sounds like this next is our e minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this and the last chord is c which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the only four chords you need to know to play the whole song so an extra thing about this song that makes it so beginner friendly is the order that i just showed you the chords in is actually the same order that you'll be playing those chords for the entire song so throughout the whole song it goes from g to d to e minor to c so it makes transitioning a lot easier so go ahead and pause and practice and make sure you can transition these chords pretty nicely i do have a video right here that talks about transitioning if you want to check that out but once you have those transitions under your belt let's go ahead and move into the strumming patterns all right so if you've seen any of my other tutorials you'll know that the very first strumming pattern i always suggest beginners start out with is just one simple down strum on the beat and i think this is going to be really great for those of you who just have trouble with singing and playing at the same time to kind of get used to where those transitions are going to be as well as just for some practice like core transition practice so let me go ahead and just show you how this works really quick you're going to want to start with your g chord because that's the first chord in the song and you're just going to strum down once then you'd move into your next chord which is our d strum down once then we've got our e minor strum down one and then our c all right and so basically what you want to do is go through the entire song and make sure that you know where those chord transitions are going to be for example what word you're singing if you're going to be singing so let's go ahead and go through a quick example all right so that's just a little taste of it but you want to go ahead and go through the entire song and just make sure that you can do that and you know where those transitions are it'll be a lot more easy and helpful for you to move into some of these other showing patterns so let's go ahead and jump into the first actual strumming pattern that i would suggest using for this song so my first pattern suggestion would be the very versatile down down up up down up pattern and so it's going to sound a little something like this so now that you've heard what the rhythm sounds like let's go ahead and put a chord with that so we're going to start with our g because again that's the first chord in the song and what i'm going to do is just play through the pattern a few times and i want you to jump in whenever you feel like you've got it okay one two three four one two ready go down up up down down down up up down go ahead and jump in whenever you're ready all right great so another thing i love about this pattern is you can actually use it to play through the entire song once you get those chord transitions in there so let's go ahead and practice those chord transitions again we're starting with our g chord since that's the first chord in the song and we're only going to play this pattern through one time for every chord change one two three four one two ready go up down you got it all right so great that's actually how you would play it for the entire song and like i said you could use this strumming pattern for the entire song and i think it sounds pretty great however i actually like to use a different strumming pattern that i think sounds a little bit more accurate to the original song so let's go ahead and jump into strumming pattern two alright so this second strumming pattern is actually the one that i like to use which i'll use in the cover portion of this tutorial um but as you can see it's just eight down strums super simple and we're gonna again play this pattern through one time for each chord so let's go ahead and listen to the rhythm first alright so now that you got the rhythm let's go ahead and practice that a little bit together by putting our g chord on and just going through it a few times again i'm gonna play through this a few times and i want you to jump in whenever you feel ready one two three four one two ready go down down down down down down down down so go ahead and jump in we're just staying on all down straps awesome so you might have been able to hear while we were going through that little portion there i do like to accent certain beats so if you can see here i'm going to underline the beats that i accent which are the first the fourth and the seventh it kind of just drives the rhythm a little bit more instead of having it at all just a monotonous down strum so instead of just strumming them all with the same force you're going to accent the first fourth and seventh beat so you go one two three so again that's optional that's just something that i find myself doing a lot of the time so if you want to add that in there i would suggest that it kind of gives the rhythm a little bit more drive but now that you got that down let's go ahead and put the chord transitions back in so remember we're just going to play this pattern through one time for every chord change one two three four one two ready go go you got it great now one last thing i do want to tell you guys about again is totally optional but something that i find myself doing as well is in the original song i feel like it starts out kind of like softer and then it kind of grows in volume and intensity as the song goes forward so what i like to do there is i will add a palm mute to this exact same strumming pattern and it kind of just dampens the sound a little bit which i actually think sounds really good with this song so let me go ahead and show you an example again i'm using this exact same pattern i'm just using a little bit of a palm mute see how it kind of softens this pattern makes it a little less ringy and a little more dampened which i think sounds cool see the stone set in your eyes see the horn all right so again that's totally optional if you want to add that in all i'm doing is laying the side of my pick hand so kind of like the side of your palm and you're just gently laying it on your strings between the sound hole and the bridge and so every time you strum instead of letting it ring you're just gonna have it be a little more muted like that okay and if you need a little extra help with palm eating i do have a full tutorial on how to do that as well so make sure to check that out if that's something you need help with so like i said i actually prefer using strumming pattern 2 for my little play through cover portion however um strumming pattern one will work as well you could even do like a mixture of both if you wanted to so it's all up to you you have a lot of room for creativity all right guys now that i've shown you the basics it's your turn to have a little bit of fun so make sure to click right here to join me for my playthrough cover portion of this tutorial where we'll play through the song together and there will be the chords and lyrics and everything you need to know on screen in front of you or if you find this to be a little bit challenging no worries you can always check out my patreon page where i have printable downloadable guitar guides that has everything that i've said in this tutorial on paper for you or you can play along to my backing tracks which are customizable and you can slow things down speed things up turn things on and off so you can tailor your practice session to what you need or if you still need a little bit of help you can even send me videos of you playing and asking me your questions and things like that and i will send you a video response back so again that's all available in my patreon page which is linked in the description box below so make sure to check that out if you would like to speaking of which i'd also like to give a huge shout out and thank you to my existing patrons for making videos just like this one possible it's because of your support that i'm able to keep this channel running so thank you guys so much i really appreciate it and you guys rock so that does conclude this portion of my tutorial um here are my social media sites in case you'd like to follow me on any of those that's just where i do fun things like behind the scenes looks at things coming up i'll pull you guys on what you want to see and i'll even do giveaways on there so make sure to check that out if you would like to and don't forget to check out my playthrough cover video here where you can jam along with me and i hope to see you over there thanks for watching bye you