Guitar lesson - All Star by Smash Mouth

Hey there puppies, Your Guitar Sage, today, we’re going to learn how to play All Star by Smash Mouth, and I’m just going to jump into it right away. I got my chart here on my screen, so I’m going to start playing. Of course, we’re doing on the acoustics, so it’s going to be a little bit different than playing it on an electric. So, on the start, for those of you, they can just watch what I'm doing and learn, then great. We’ll be done here in about two to three minutes learning this song. For those of you that need more help, just stick around and we’ll talk about the particular parts. So, it’s going to be something like this. It’s going to go. [Demonstration], so this is the verse [demonstration]. Okay, the chorus is going to go… [Demonstration] Okay, so really those are the two basic parts of this song. There’s a verse and there’s a chorus. Let’s talk about each part or let’s talk about the chords in particular first, you know we’ll talk about each part. Also, for those of you that the don’t understand what I’m doing by strumming or who don’t know how to play these basic chords, or let’s say you want to get a hold to this chart that I'm looking at right here, check out yourguitarsage.com. I’ve got a great instructional eBook there that’s going to help you with this song and the other hundreds of songs. Well, we’re almost up to a hundred now on YouTube but there’s actually thousands of songs over here hopefully. But, that eBook will help with that. So, check that out, yourguitarsage.com and let’s move on. So, the chords you’re going to need for this are [demonstration] G, D, A minor, and a C, that’s for the verse. And the chorus, you’re going to need a [demonstration] G, C, and A major and an F. And in fact, this is A chord [demonstration], the bass player is playing a C sharp [demonstration], so it’s really like a [demonstration] instead of [demonstration]. It’s [demonstration] that guy right there. So, some of you are going to have an issue playing that chord, others of you are going to be fine with it. So, I'm giving you this A chord [demonstration] as kind of a substitution, it will work. So, let’s talk about the verse and then we’ll talk about the chorus. So you could play this song a couple of different ways. If we were just doing like [demonstration], you can do it like that just like a basic rhythm. And of course, if you’re doing like a solo guitar, like just by yourself or you might want to opt for doing something like that instead of the [demonstration]. Because that’s just the little—you know? And when you have a bass player and a drummer player along with you, then it does sounds good of course. So here is to how and what you think about the chords, this entire song with the exception of the very last measure of the chords are all split bars, okay and I’ll explain that in a minute. First of, the song is in four, so like [demonstration]. That’s what we sing when we strum at four, it’s counted like that. And specifically, for this verse, each chord gets two beats and it’s going to go like this [demonstration] G, D, A minor, C. And then just keep repeating that over and over again, okay. So all the verses are the same and it’s just [demonstration] G, D, A minor, C. Then you can speed it up. [Demonstration] And that rhythm there, if you wanted to do what I'm doing there, it’s like a [demonstration]. Okay, let me do that rhythm slowly with you. If you want, if you haven’t done these rhythms before, you may want to mute your strings [demonstration] like that and just work on the rhythm, don’t worry about the chords yet. That’s a little much if you’re just starting this rhythm here. But you’re going to go [demonstration] one, and two, and three, and four, and a. So really, the only time you’re coming up is on the depth of the beat. And yes, that’s really technical. The depth of the beat one, and two, and a three, and four and a. It’s really important for you to get your rhythm. Your right hand strumming rhythm in tandem or to get in sync if you will and to be doing that sort of, all down beats there, except for the depth of the beat. And so, with the chords, it’s going to sound like this… [Demonstration] You speed it up. [Demonstration] Now, what I'm doing is having the mute here which have a lot of close that we’re—and say how you’re doing that. Basically, take this part of your palm and lay it on to the string itself [demonstration], and as you’re strumming, you’re basically muting the strings. So, just work on it. It’s not going to come to you like riding a bike. It’s going to take—while you remember when you started riding a bike, it didn’t come to you either. You have to fall at sometimes. So maybe just go to work on this stuff. Don’t get discouraged, just keep working on it, it will happen. All right, that’s the verse. We need to move on because we’re running out of time. The chorus is going to go like this. Again, two beats per chords. It’s going to go [demonstration] G, C, A, C, G, C, A, C, G, C, A, C, G, F, C. And the C, you’ll hold that for four beats one, two, three, four. Okay, so I mentioned to you that we may be looking at this alternative chord here. And so instead of this A [demonstration], the bass players are doing like [demonstration]. So we have that [demonstration] note to the A chord, we got [demonstration] instead of [demonstration]. Otherwise, it would be like [demonstration], which is not bad. It’s just a low less flavor. So again, [demonstration] G, A, or you could say an A with a C sharp in the bass. And so, here is a C [demonstration], here is a C sharp [demonstration]. So what I do is I take my third finger and put it right there and still take my first finger and bar [demonstration] strings two, three, and four. I just mute that high E strings to play like that. So, it’s like… [Demonstration] If you need to mute this low E string, you might bring your thumb over the top [demonstration]. But again, it’s a little bit awkward and if you’re playing with a bass player, it’s just good to play the A chord, and he’ll be playing a C sharp hopefully. [Demonstration] Okay, kids, that’s it on this tune. If you haven’t already hit subscribe so you can get these lovely videos in your inbox weekly, I don’t know how YouTube does it, but if you feel like, check that out. But if you haven’t already check out the eBook at yourguitarsage.com, and also playing that how to get a hold to this chart on that same page. Okay, kids, keep practicing and we’ll see you soon.