Yesterday by The Beatles Tutorial/Lesson
Yesterday
C, B7, E7, Am, G, F, C/B, D7, Bm, Dm, Dm6, G7
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Video transcript
hey everyone my name is ellen and today i'll be showing you guys how to play yesterday by the beatles on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something you want to learn and a huge shout out to my patrons over on my patreon page for picking this song as this month's patron pick if you want some voting power in the next tutorial make sure to check out my patreon page linked below all right guys so to play this song in the same key as the beatles you do want to have your guitar in standard tuning with your capo on the fifth fret and that's just to make these chords a little bit easier for you guys speaking of which i would consider this song a little bit more on the intermediate side so like beginner intermediate just because there's a lot of chords so um there's actually 10 chords that you will need to know and two additional chords if you want to add them in there they're kind of optional because they can be replaced but i'll explain all of that in the chords section i also wanted to show you one main strumming pattern as well as one picking pattern that you can use for this song so let's go ahead and jump into it and we'll start with the chord all right guys so let's go ahead and take a closer look at these chords like i said there are ten that you need to know for the song and then two kind of optional ones but let's go ahead and go with the ones that you have to know so let's go ahead and start with our c chord which looks like this and sounds like this from there we're going to go to our b7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have our e7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this next we have our a minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this from there we have our g which looks like this and sounds like this then we're coming up on our first bar chord which is our f chord and that looks like this and sounds like this then we have our c over b chord which looks like this and sounds like this then we have our d7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this from there we're going to go into our other bar chord which is our b minor chord and that looks like this and sounds like this and then we have our d minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right so now you can play through the whole song with those ten chords but there are a few like optional chords that i'm going to throw in here because it does kind of dress up the song sound a little bit better so one of them is our d minor six chord and that looks like this and sounds like this and now if you don't want to play the d minor six or that's hard for you you can replace it in this um song with your regular d minor chord and the other optional chord i'm going to throw in here is our g7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right and again if this is too hard or you don't want to play this you can just replace that with your regular g throughout this song but those 12 chords are the ones that i will be using in my little play through so uh go ahead and pause the video make sure you have those memorized and then we can come back and go through the strumming patterns so if you're familiar with any of my other tutorials i do always start out with kind of a beginner practice strumming pattern which is just one simple down strum on the b for every chord change i do suggest that you do this if you're new to guitar or new to this song just so you can kind of get used to where those chord changes are which is really important moving forward so let me go ahead and show you an example let's start with our c chord on because that's the first chord in the song you're just going to strum it down once then you go to your next chord b7 e7 a minor and you kind of want to just do that for the whole song not only to make sure that you have those chords memorized and that you can play them correctly in the right order but also to kind of get used to where those words will be like changing and what you'll be singing so what i would do now is go ahead and put the words to this one down strum pattern so it'd be more like this yesterday all my troubles seem so far away now it looks as though they're here to stay oh i believe in yesterday all right so you can see there some of these cords are held out a little bit longer and then some of them are really quick moving so for example seems so far away we go from a minor to g to f pretty quickly there there's also here to stay we go from c to c b to a minor pretty quickly so just be really aware of that moving forward because it will help you to know where to do those chord transitions when you go to some of these more difficult strumming patterns so but anyways with that being said go ahead and practice through the whole song just like that but when you want to come back let's go ahead and go through the strumming pattern that i would suggest using for this song all right guys so the actual strumming pattern i would suggest for this song it's pretty simple we're going to do a bunch of down strums in a row so what i want to do is kind of explain this a little differently so go ahead and put your c chord on because that's the first chord in the song we're just gonna strum down every eighth note so if you're not familiar with music we're basically just strumming down every beat okay so for our c chord we've got down down down down okay just eight down strums just like that one two three four five six seven eight all right super simple not that much harder than just the one down strum but what i want you to do now is we're going to do something a little different with our thumb if you're using a pick you can do this with your pick as well with your bass note so on our c chord that's going to be your fifth string your a string the one that your ring finger is on you're going to pick that kind of by itself first okay then i want you to follow through with the rest of the strum all right so we're doing a bass drum strum strum all right so you only want to play that bass note on the first like beat so one two three four one two three four all right so go ahead and try that with me b7 e7 all right and i just want to point out there that b7 and that e7 they're only being played for four beats so you have to be really familiar with this song knowing where those chord changes are so if you're having trouble with that go ahead and go back to the practice strumming pattern um but you kind of just need to know like that eighth note beat that um that tempo okay so we've got c down down twice b7 e7 to a minor this is going to be a little bit faster so a minor g to f goes a little faster so we've got a minor strum g strum f all right so let's do that again we've got a minor g f and then from there you would pick back up so let me go ahead and put some singing to this so you can kind of hear it we've got yesterday all my troubles seem so far away a minor g f now it looks as though they're here to stay and then right here it's going to go fast again we've got c b then a minor okay so that's following that same a minor gf pattern that we practiced earlier it's going to go a little faster that we're here to stay c b a minor all right and that's it that's the strumming pattern and again that applies for the whole song you do want to be aware of where those chords chord changes are a little bit faster because for those you'll just do that one strum okay so again this is going to take a little bit of practice make sure to go through on my play through to kind of hear the whole song and how it comes together one other thing i do want to mention is if you listen to the original song there's a little bit of a different rhythm when they sing the word yesterday so for that i would just do a single down strum so at the end oh i believe in yesterday on yesterday you would go f c c okay so one down strum on f two on c and that'll go with and follow through with the other pattern all right so just follows the same rhythm as the singing in the chorus they sing why she had to go i don't know she wouldn't say so right there we're going to do that same thing where we're going from our like bass drum strum strum pattern into our one down strum pattern so let's go ahead and do that whole little first section of the chorus we've got our b minor chord on we're starting with our bass drum strum okay why she single strums had to go back to your bass drum go i don't know she wouldn't say all right and then you would kind of just go through the rest of the song the verses in the chorus are all the same throughout it and they repeat themselves so make sure to pause the video practice that on your own and then when you're ready let's go ahead and jump into the picking pattern that i would suggest for this song all right guys so let's go ahead and jump into this picking pattern if you're new to any of my tutorials i do like to number my strings and i refer to them so my low e is six and it goes five four three two one all the way to my high e that just makes more sense in my brain so i hope that it makes more sense in yours as well but for this part of the tutorial i will be referring to these strings as numbers so with that being said let's go ahead and jump into how i would do this picking pattern now if you tried the strumming pattern the picking is going to be super similar to that what i want you to do is your thumb is going to cover the base note in each of these chords so it's going to cover the sixth fifth and fourth strings and then your pointer finger is going to stay on your third string your middle finger is going to stay on the second and your ring finger is going to stay on that first high e string okay and those will never change throughout the song okay your thumb is going to change based on which bass note you're playing or which chord you're playing so for example if we have our c chord on the bass note or the the lowest note the bottom note that you play in that is your fifth string okay but then again your pointer middle and ring finger are on the top three okay and those are going to stay there for the whole song so now we're going to mimic how we did that strumming pattern earlier you're just going to pick the bass note with your thumb and then instead of strumming the rest like we did you're just going to pick the top three strings with your other fingers okay so we've got five three two one and you're gonna do those three times so it goes base pick pick pick face pick pick all right and again this is going to follow the exact same pattern as we did with the strumming so let's just quickly go over the rest of the chords in this song so for c we're going to go 5 3 2 1 for b7 that's five three two one e7 is six three two one a minor is five three two one g is six three two one f is six three two one for c over b we've got five three two one for d7 is four three two one for b minor we've got five three two one and then for d minor four three two one and if you are going to throw in those optional chords we've got d minor six which is still four three two one and then we've got g7 which is still six three two one okay now i know i just threw in a lot of information at you guys but i promise it's very intuitive if you are familiar with these chords basically your thumb is going to be picking the bass note six five or four in all of them and then your pointer middle ring are going to stay on the top three all right so now the rhythm for this picking pattern is going to be very similar to our strumming you're just going to pick the base first and then follow it up with the top three one two three right so for c we've got five pick pick pick twice then you go to your b7 chord five pick pick pick e7 six pick pick pick a minor five pick pick pick and then here when it does the walk down from a minor to g to f it's going to follow just like our strumming pattern okay we're going to do this really quickly we've got our a minor five pick go to your g six pick go to your f six pick pick pick all right so just remember that walk down is really the only part that's a little bit more tricky than the rest of the song so let's go ahead and go through that first little phrase so you can see the walk down yesterday all my troubles seem so far away walk down now it looks as though they're here to stay walk down all right so two things to note there um the walk downs do go a little quicker if you were able to follow that and then also just like we talked about in the strumming when you go to the yesterday word we're going to be doing a full on picking yesterday all right so again that's the same your fingers on your right hand are in the same exact position the only thing that we're doing different is we're picking all of the strings at the same time so for f we've got six three two one then for c we've got five three two one twice all right so it's yesterday but then the rest of the song is going to be the same okay so we've got that bass pic pick all right and that'll be how most of the song goes again in the chorus you have another one of those spots where we're going to pick all the strings at the same time so we've got our b minor chord on y she here on the walk down from a minor to g to f had to go we're going to pick all our strings had to go okay a minor g and then for f you can go back to your base pick so let's do that little phrase there she had to go i don't know she wouldn't say all right so again those are just little parts of this song that are going to be a little bit different just keep those in mind moving forward again make sure to check out my full playthrough if you want to hear how it all comes together at the end but with that being said let's go ahead and put everything we've learned together to play through the song now that you guys know how to play the chords the strumming and that picking pattern it's your turn to have some fun so make sure to click right here to join me and jam with me in this song where i play through the whole thing with the chords and lyrics and everything on screen or if you find this one to be a little bit too fast you can also check out my patreon page where you have a customizable backing track where you can slow things down speed things up turn things on and off it's really interactive so i hope you'll check that out and you can also get printable guitar guides on my patreon page as well so all of that will be linked in the description box below and another huge shout out to my existing patrons for making this and all the other videos on my channel possible thank you so that was my tutorial for how to play yesterday by the beatles thanks so much for watching if you found this helpful make sure to give me a thumbs up down below as well 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 where i do fun things like behind the scenes looks at things coming up pulls on things you guys want to see and there's an occasional giveaway on there as well so make sure to check it out if you want to but that kind of ends this tutorial so thank you guys so much for watching make sure to click here to join me in the play through and i will see you in the next one bye do you