Guitar Lesson - With or Without You by U2

Hey there kitty cats at Your Guitars Sage. Today, we’re going to learn how to play With or Without You by U2. It's a really simple tune because it's the same four chords over and over again, and don’t we love it? I mean we don’t get bored with this song. It's a pretty genius actually, with this chord progression you could play it for a gazillon different songs even in the same key but we don’t get bored with it because U2 does such a fabulous job of rising and falling in this thing. It’s beautiful. Okay so, there’s my 2 cents. Here we go, let’s learn this tune. For those of you that just want to watch me do it and you can get right away by just watching do it. For those of you that needs to stick around and learn more about the rhythm and the chords and all that then do that; and also I’m going to show you an alternate way to play this. Okay so, it's gong to go something like this— [Demonstration] So basically, this is a D— [Demonstration] A B minor, I’m sorry I can’t play it— [Demonstration] A, G— [Demonstration] B minor— So the songs in four like— [Demonstration] As far as the rhythm, you can pretty much anything you want that feels good in this song, maybe like— [Demonstration] And at any lighter tuned guitars— [Demonstration] And that is the verse, the chorus, the solo section, the bridge and it's pretty much everything on this particular chart that I’m looking at in. it's just these verse and chorus but it's everything in this song. I’m going to go into some other things here so for those of you that have it already then you can move on to the video or for those of you that need more help here we’re going to talk about some particulars. The techniques and what hand I’m using here, I have an ebook on yourguitarsage.com that will really help you out if you’re frustrated or you can’t play any of these chords or you need more help with charts or capos or any of that stuff. It's about a 33-page document that will really – your playing especially on the acoustic guitar and I do electric stuff as well because it's kind of what we’re doing for the time. Okay, so here we go. I told you I would tell you an alternative way to play this. You could capo this at the second fret and your chords then would be like a— [Demonstration] So you could hear that’s the same— [Demonstration] Or it sound similar to this— [Demonstration] I like to actually do this in the studio a lot of times if I’m tracking guitars I might put my left channel and might have this— [Demonstration] And then in my right channel, I’ll capo it and use a different voice in this and then I’ve got— [Demonstration] It's just a slightly different sound. It thickens the track up a beat so it's a pretty cool little technique for those of you that record yourself. Okay, since we have a little bit more time let’s talk about the theoretical structure of these chords. For those of you that followed my national number system well the ebook, soon to be in video. I’ll haven’t done one when we’re ready for that but if we think about this song being in the key of D— [Demonstration] So we name our notes in our Major scale one through seven, then— [Demonstration] Our A chord is our fifth chord— [Demonstration] That’s an A— [Demonstration] And the our minor six is – [Demonstration] That’s a B minor— [Demonstration] And our G is our fourth— [Demonstration] If we were looking at these charts, say in the studio with the number system, it would be 1-5-minor 6-4 however; you want to say it, okay. Since the song is in four, meaning the B of 4 or 4-4, then each chord gets four beats— [Demonstration] That’s pretty much it, a real simple tune; hopefully you guys have learned something here today. If you have it already, this is your first video. Hit subscribe so you can check out the new videos that I’m putting up everyday and also check out that ebook at yourguitarsage.com. All right gang, we’ll practice and we’ll see you soon.