Yellow by Coldplay Tutorial/Lesson
Yellow
G, D, C, Em, Cmaj7, Dm7
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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 yellow by coldplay on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something you want to learn and before we get started i just wanted to thank all of my patrons for voting in this month's patreon picks poll on my patreon page they voted for yellow by coldplay which is why i'm doing this full-length tutorial so if you want some voting power in my next tutorial make sure to check out my patreon page linked below look how they shine for you so this song is going to be really great if you're a beginner because it's pretty easy to start out you want to have your guitar in standard tuning and we're going to go ahead and put our capos on the fourth fret just to keep it as easy as possible with these chords and speaking of the chords there's only six chords to play through the whole song and two of them are kind of optional so really you only need to know four basic chords none of them are bar chords which is great for beginners as well and i just have one simple strumming pattern that i want to show you that you can play for the entire song so with that being said let's go ahead and jump into it and we'll start with 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 six but really only four of them are like necessary so let's go ahead and go over those first the first chord is g which looks like this and sounds like this after that you need to know d which looks like this and sounds like this then we have our c chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the last one that you really need to know is your e minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right and at the very end of the song you do see two other chords but i'm going to tell you that these are optional because you don't have to know them one of them is our c major 7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this and then the other one is d minor 7 which looks like this and sounds like this but just so you know if you don't want to play those you can always replace your c major 7 with your regular c chord and you can replace your d minor seven with just a regular d chord but those are the only chords you need to know for the song alright so after you have those chords memorized go ahead and take a few moments to practice transitioning between them the song is a little bit slower so you have a little bit of time to transition but it is going to be a lot easier for you to learn the strumming patterns and the play through and things like that if you are used to those transitions so go ahead and pause the video make sure you are comfortable with those but once you are we can jump into the strumming pattern that i like to use for this song so if you are brand new to guitar or having trouble with like playing guitar and singing at the same time no worries i wanted to show you my practice pattern which is just one simple down strum on the beat for every chord change if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials i always start with this especially if you are beginner at guitar so what i want you to do is just go through the entire song and we're just going to strum each chord down once while practicing our singing that way we know which word you're singing whenever you are changing those chords so let's go ahead and do a little example i've got my g chord on because that's the first chord in the song you're just going to strum down once then you go to your next chord d then c and then back to g all right and i want you to do that for the entire song and just practice singing or speaking the words so you know where those transitions are g look at the stars look how they shine for d u and everything you see yeah they were all yellow back to g all right so do that for the entire song it'll really help you whenever we bump up a little bit on this strumming pattern but with that being said let's go ahead and jump into the strumming pattern i actually do like to use for this song alright so this is the strumming pattern that i would suggest for this song it's super simple as you can see it's just eight down strums and what you want to do is you just want to hold out this strumming pattern two times for each chord so with our g chord on let's go ahead and just go through the rhythm it's just eight simple down strums one two three four five six seven eight that's it's that simple and um what you wanna do now is you wanna emphasize certain beads this is really going to help drive that rhythm and just make it a little bit more close to the original so here you can see i'm underlining the beats that i want you to emphasize so we've got the first beat the fourth beat and the seventh beat so with that what you want to do is just put a little bit more oomph into your strum on those beats so we've got one two three four five six seven eight all right so a little bit faster we've got it like this one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight jump in we're just staying on the g chord so we can get this rhythm practice those so once you get that down the only thing left you have to do is put in those core transitions so with the verses we're gonna play this pattern through two times for each chord and then on the choruses it's gonna change a little bit so we'll go over that in a second but let's go ahead and go over the verse we've got g to d to c okay so on all of these we're going to play this pattern through two times so for g we've got one two three four five six seven eight again one two three four five six seven eight then we go to d one two three four five six seven eight again two three four five six seven eight c two three four five six seven eight again two three four five six seven eight back to g one two all right and that is how you play all of the verses throughout this song so like i said the chorus is a little bit different because it's gonna feel a little bit faster because we're kind of shortening the pattern here so let me explain that a little bit our chorus starts on a c chord so go ahead and put on your c chord this time we're just gonna play this pattern through one time okay so we're gonna count to eight one two three four five six seven eight then we're gonna go to our e minor and just play it four times one two three four then d four times one two three four all right so it's a little bit different than the verses but the choruses all follow that exact same pattern with these exact same chords so for that we've got c two three four five six seven eighty minor two three four e two three four all right so again all of the choruses throughout this entire song follow this exact pattern just like all of the verses follow the pattern that we just practiced i do want to show you just two extra little things really quick if you are more advanced and want to try this out i do think it sounds pretty good with this song the first thing i want to show you is a palm mute so what we're going to do is when you're strumming these chords instead of letting it ring like like it's doing right now what you want to do is take your right hand the hand with your pick in it and you're just going to gently lay it across your strings all six strings between your sound hole and your bridge like there's a sweet spot for everyone it's different for everyone so go ahead and just try that out i also have a video right here that talks about palm muting if you need a little extra hint there but anyways you just want to gently lay your hand here and then when you strum it's not as uh ringy of course it doesn't sound very good right now but when you put the rhythm in it sounds great so we've got one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight all right so if you want to try that out i do think that palm muting the verses kind of gives the guitar a little bit more interest makes it sound a little bit more interesting if you're doing a cover or something like that obviously this is not necessary if you want to let it ring the whole time you totally can the second thing i wanted to show you guys really quick is sometimes when i'm doing my cover instead of eight down strums at the very end of the pattern after that eighth down strum i'll do an extra up strum so it'll be more like one two three four five six seven eight all right totally optional this is just something i've noticed that i've done sometimes i'm just letting you know that this is something that you could do too one two three so just a little extra up strum so again i do that sometimes it's kind of random so feel free to put that in if you want to but with that being said that is everything you need to know to play this entire song like i said it's very beginner friendly and so um if you want to play through the song with me make sure to click right here and i have my play through fast track um cover version where i will sing through the song the entire way through and we can play it together it'll be a lot of fun or if you need a little bit more help found this a little difficult make sure to check out my patreon page as well because i have guides there that you can print out and it has everything i've just said in this video written down so you can like have it with you all the time and i also have customizable interactive backing tracks where you can turn the speed slower faster turn the metronome on and off you can even turn off my singing if you don't like me singing or you know you can turn off the guitar if you want to practice with me singing and stuff like that so it's very cool i would definitely suggest checking out one of these two either this video if you feel like you're ready to play this link over here if you want to check out my patreon so that was my tutorial thank you so much for watching i really hope that it helped you if it did make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well as to subscribe to my channel that way you never miss out on any other new tutorials another huge huge thank you and shout out to all of my patrons on my patreon page for selecting this song as the monthly patron pick tutorial that they wanted to see like i said at the beginning if you want to vote for the next one make sure to check out my patreon page i'll link it down below and um here are my other socials in case you'd like to follow me on any of those that's where i do fun things like behind the scenes looks at things coming up i'll pull you guys on things you want to see and i even have free lesson giveaways on my instagram page so make sure to check it out over there if you're interested thank you guys so much for watching my video i hope it helped make sure to do the play through if you want to jam out with me and i will see you in my next tutorial coming out really soon bye do you