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Wonderwall by Oasis Tutorial/Lesson

Wonderwall

Em7, G, Dsus4, A7sus4, Cadd9, D/F#

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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 wonderwall by oasis on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you'd like to learn all right guys so let's just quickly go over the overview this is going to be a beginner friendly song to learn but first of all make sure your guitar is in standard tuning and i have my capo on the second fret that's going to put you in the original key as the original song you can follow this tutorial through without a capo it just will be a whole step lower so you'll have to sing your cover a little bit lower in addition to that you will need to know six chords to play this song and all of them are open chord shapes so it's really great for beginners and i am going to be showing you four different strumming patterns as well but don't let that freak you out they are pretty straightforward and intuitive and you can like kind of mix and match them and i'll explain all of that in the strumming section so let's go ahead and start off with our chords all right guys so i've zoomed in a little bit to take a closer look at these chords like i said there are six shapes that you're going to need to know for this song and we're going to start with our e minor 7 which looks like this and sounds like this from there we need to know our g chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our d suspended four which looks like this and sounds like this next we have our a7 suspended four chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our ciad 9 chord which looks like this and sounds like this and the last chord shape you need to know is our d over f sharp which looks like this and sounds like this and those are the only six chords you need to know to play through the song so i did want to point out something about these chords really quickly if you'll notice in all of our chord shapes we're never going to move our pinky or our ring finger they're always going to be in the same spot for all six chords and you can look at this either as a good thing or a bad thing i like to look at it as a good thing because if you're a beginner you don't have to move those two fingers which makes core transitioning a lot easier because you just have to focus on your pointer and your middle finger um but if you look at it as a bad thing it can get a little bit painful after a while if you're playing through the whole song so just make sure that you're building up those calluses and if this is something that you need help with make sure to check out my video right here about how to fix your finger pain but with that being said go ahead and pause the video and take a few moments to practice those core transitions and just make sure that you can get through them pretty smoothly back and forth um this song does move a little bit quickly with those transitions just make sure that you have them under your belt if that's something you need help with i do have a video right here about core transitioning and how to get better at those so check that out but um with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming patterns that i like to use for this song all right so if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials i do like to start out with a practice pattern which is just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change i always suggest beginners start out like this or if you're not really familiar with the song just start out with this practice pattern because it does really help you like orient yourself like within the song where those chord transitions are going to be and things like that so let's go ahead and put an example here on screen all you need to do is play through each of these chords with one simple down strum so we're starting with our e minor 7 to our g d sus4 a7 sus4 and after you can kind of just go through the song like that you want to practice singing with it to know where like which words you're going to be singing when you're switching those chords so let's go ahead and go through the first verse together and just go through an example one two three four today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you by now you should have somehow realized what you gotta do all right so again just take a moment to go through the whole song and like really highlight where those words are where you're gonna be switching those chords it's really going to help you out a ton whenever we kind of amp up our strumming patterns so let's go ahead and jump into our first real strumming pattern alright guys so the first strumming pattern i want to show you is strumming pattern one and as you can see it's down down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this so now that you've heard the rhythm let's go ahead and put a chord shape to that and just kind of hear how that sounds so let's put our e minor seven chords on and this strumming pattern is just gonna be a simple down down down down up all right that's the whole thing one more time down down down down up awesome so now that you have the feeling of that strumming pattern under your belt let's go ahead and put it in rhythm and i'm going to speed it up a little bit as well one two three four down down down down so you may have noticed while i was announcing that pattern with you we were kind of emphasizing that third down strum this is going to be really helpful when you put all of these strumming patterns together just to kind of keep that beat going but basically all i'm doing there is i'm just kind of strumming that one down a little bit harder with a little bit more force than the other down strum so we have down down down up down down so you can see here with my strumming hand i'm just getting a little bit more of a bigger motion there so anytime you see an underlined um arrow here it's because i'm going to be emphasizing that okay so we've got down down down up down down down down up now if you wanted to you could use this pattern to play through the whole song so let's go ahead and just go through an example of what that would sound like i have some chord progressions listed here on screen and all you want to do is play through this pattern one time through for each of these chords so starting on our e minor seven one two so even though you could use strumming pattern one to play through the entire song i would recommend switching back and forth between strumming pattern one and strumming pattern two which as you can see is down up down down down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this all right now that you've heard the rhythm let's go ahead and put our e minor seven chord down and just play through it we've got down up down down up all right and that's the whole pattern down up down down down up nice all right so now that you have that strumming motion down all we have to do now is speed it up a little bit so i'm going to count us off and we want to do this together one two ready go down up down down down up down down down and again as the strumming pattern one you could use this pattern to play through the whole song if you wanted to so let's go ahead and go through an example of what that would sound like i've got the chord progressions listed here on screen and again you're just going to play through this pattern one time through for each of these chords one two ready go down down down up down down down down up down down down is all right so now that you guys have practiced drawing pattern one and strumming pattern two the kind of like secret sauce to playing this song is to go back and forth between these two strumming patterns it creates a really full kind of rhythm on the guitar and sounds a lot like the original so let me just go through an example of what that would sound like i have the chord progressions listed on screen here again e minor 7 to g to d suspended to a7 suspended so again what we're gonna do is go through strumming pattern one on the first chord then go to strumming pattern two for the second back to strumming pattern one for the third back to starting pattern two for the second okay so on our e minor seven we've got down down down down up to our g chord strumming pattern two down up down down down up to d suspended four strumming pattern one down down down down up to a seven sus 4 summary pattern 2 down up down down down all right so if you can i would recommend kind of going back and forth between those two strumming patterns to kind of fill in some of this like space and just make the rhythm guitar part sound a lot cooler so a little bit faster and strung together that sounds like this nice so if you can do that and go back and forth between those two strumming patterns i would recommend doing that for the entirety of the song it sounds really close to the original but it's kind of an easy like broken down way of doing it but of course i did mention at the beginning that i have more strumming patterns to show you and that is because these last two patterns are kind of like extra frilly kind of patterns that you can put into your cover if you want to so let's go ahead and dive into strumming pattern three all right so as you can see our third strumming pattern is down up down up down up down up and it's gonna sound a little something like this all right and as straightforward as that kind of sounds that is exactly how easy it is we're just going to be kind of doing a back and forth down up strumming pattern and this is kind of like a throw in whenever you want to kind of a strumming pattern that i like to use in my cover to kind of build up to the next phrase or the next chord or the next part of the song like a verse to a chorus or something like that so um basically what i will do is i will go back and forth between strumming pattern one and two like i did earlier so we've got e minor seven d suspended but here on this a7 something cool you can do to kind of fill in that space is just kind of like pump the down up motion so on a7 i've got down up down up all right so you're basically just strumming that whole thing down up down up down now i would not recommend using this pattern for the entire song it's just going to make the guitar part sound really messy um but if you throw it in strategically into parts of the song it can really build up the the feel of the entire song as a whole so again let me just show you where i would put that in so i've got my chord progressions listed on screen we're gonna do a strumming pattern one for e minor seven and d suspended strumming pattern two four g and then we're gonna throw in this third strumming pattern for the a7 and you'll see how that all comes together and kind of builds up the rhythm of the guitar so on e minor seven we've got down down up to g down up down down down up to d suspended down down down down up to a7 suspended four down up down up so it sounds a lot better if you don't stop between each chord so let me just show you that one more time all right so hopefully you could hear how that kind of down up droning pattern really like builds up so i would suggest kind of throwing that in there throughout your cover wherever you're going from like one phrase to the next phrase one part of the song like a verse to the next part like a chorus something like that so um if you want an example of what i would do i have it in my play through here but the other last pattern that i wanted to show you is kind of another optional pattern in a way so for strumming pattern four we have down down up down down up and it's going to sound a little something like this and again as you can see i have some of these down strums underlined which again means we're going to just kind of emphasize those beats a little bit by doing a little bit more forceful of a strum so let's go ahead and just practice this on our e minor seven chord we've got down down up down down all right one more time down down down down now the reason i have this pattern in here is because there are places where you're going to be switching your cords a little bit faster than the rest of them so for most of this song you are going to be able to stay on a whole pattern through one whole little round on each chord but there are places where it's going to go a little bit faster so for example in the bridge there's a part that goes there are many things that i would like to say to you but i don't know how and on like to say to you we're gonna go from g to d over f sharp to e minor seven pretty quickly so let me just show you there c add nine there are many things that i would g to d over f sharp to e minor seven so you can see there it's going twice as fast and that's exactly where i would use strumming pattern four so strumming pattern four i'm going to put like a little vertical line in between these little sections so we've got down up on one side down down up on the other side and i'm putting that there because we're going to utilize this strumming pattern for any time in the song where your chord transitions are going a little bit faster so in that example i've got my c add9 chord on you could do any strumming pattern i'll just do strumming pattern one down down down down up d suspended down up down down down up and then from here g to d over f sharp to e minor seven we're going to do strumming pattern four g is down down up switch to d over f sharp down down up back to e minor seven and back to your regular strumming pattern down up down all right so let me just do that without stopping it'll make a lot more sense so again on g to d over f sharp and i think that's exclusively where i use that in this song but you're always going to want to make those transitions go a little bit faster so we've got g down down up to d over f sharp down down up to e minor 7 and back to your other regular strumming patterns all right guys so before i kind of conclude this little strumming portion let's just kind of do a quick recap because i know that was a lot of information so our practice pattern is a single down strum i would just recommend doing that for when you're getting used to the song and just doing a single down for those transitions after that if you're doing a cover of this song i would recommend going back and forth between striving pattern one and strumming pattern two if you do that for your whole cover it should sound really close to the original but stirring pattern three can be thrown in whenever you want to kind of build a little bit of that like um that momentum that tension like going into parts of the song it's really fun to kind of throw in there whenever you see fit and then strumming pattern four is just going to be used for those chord transitions that are going a little bit faster than the rest of them so i hope all of that makes sense if you do want my recommendation on how to put all of these strumming together i would recommend playing with my fast track tutorial right here where i have all of that listed or you can check out my patreon page to download the printable guitar guide where i have everything listed there as well all right guys now that you've had those cords memorized and you practice those transitions and we kind of talked about all the different strummings that you can put into your cover it's your turn to have a little bit of fun so make sure to join me right here for my fast track play along version of this song where i have everything listed on screen including the chords and lyrics and everything else you need to know for how i would suggest playing this song i will put it in the little icard link right here so make sure to click on that to join me for that um or if that's a little bit too fast for you or too confusing or anything like that again you can always visit my patreon page which i will link down below and there you can download a printable guide with everything that i've just said in this tutorial written out if you're more of a visual learner as well as the chords and lyrics and all of the progressions and everything like that on my patreon page i also have a really cool backing track where you can kind of customize your practice session by slowing things down speeding things up you can turn things on and off and louder and quieter how you see fit so you know metronome vocals drums everything is very uh customizable to how you want to practice so i would suggest checking that out in my patreon page which is again linked down below but yeah that concludes my video today i really hope that you guys found this helpful if you did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on any other new tutorials here are my social media sites in case you'd like to follow me on any of those that's just for you fun things like behind the scenes looks of things coming up i'll pull you guys on what you want to see next and i'll even do giveaways on there a few times a year so make sure to follow me on my socials but um yeah that does conclude the video so thank you so much for watching i hope it helped and i will see you next time bye you

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