Hey guy, what’s up? It’s Aaron. The next song I’m going to teach is a new one out by Beyonce called “If I Were a Boy.” I’ve got lot of requests for it and I actually, I heard it on the radio and I think it’s pretty cool song. So this song is in half step down tuning. If you don’t know what that is, basically in standard tuning your guitar is tuned to E, A, D, G, B, E. In this one, each one of those stings is taken down half step so instead of E, it’s E flat, instead of A, it’s A flat. That type of thing.
If you don’t know much about tuning your guitar down, all you need to do and the quick way to do it is take your capo, put it on the first fret of your guitar. Tune it to standard, E, A, D, G, B, E. Take the capo off, and now it caused it to go down a step and you’ll be in half step down tuning.
But this is a really easy song. It’s got the same picking pattern, or strumming pattern, up to you, wherever you want to do the entire song. The only four chords you need is an E minor, a C, the tab says it’s an E minor and a C, and a D, but actually that’s just kind of to give you the bass chord I guess because I think it’s really an E minor 7, a C and nine, a G and a D, so it’s four, maybe, I don’t know.
But the four chords you’re going to use are your two fingers here, your ring and pinky go on the third fret on your bottom two strings and they stay there the whole song. They don’t ever move. Then the first chord you play those are in E minor, so your pointer finger and your middle finger come up here on the fourth and fifth strings. From the top, they are the second and third strings down, but they’re the fourth string and the fifth string, your A and your D string. They’re on the second fret, your pointer and your middle. It sounds like this.
The next chord you’re going to go to is the C and nine. The tab says C, don’t worry about it. C and nine, basically all I do to get here is bottom two fingers stay, and your pointer finger drops down the string, so it’s on the D string now, your fourth string on the second fret. And your middle comes down here to the fifth string which is your A string on the third fret. And this is your C and nine. You want to try not to play this low E, just the bottom five. If you play it, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter.
But try this playing the bottom five. The next chord you use is a G. To get there, all you do is move your middle finger and pointer up one string. So before you’re on this top string wasn’t occupied. Now the G, your middle finger’s going to be there on the third fret. The A string is now open but you’re going to put your pointer finger on the second fret. So now from the top to the bottom, you have middle finger third fret, pointer finger second, open, open, ring and pinky still on the bottom two.
And the next one is a D, but it’s really D sus, something. I think four maybe. So what you’re going to do is like I said, these two don’t move, and your pointer finger comes on here on your G string which is your third up from the bottom, second fret. And you try and strum on the bottom four. Alright, so the intro you can hear them playing in the song. I haven’t found tabs for it. But I think it’s pretty simple. You just use the four chords that I just gave you. If you want to pick the whole song, you can repeat that the same picking pattern I’m about to show you. These four chords, the entire song, or you can mix in the picking to the intro and then maybe the strumming for the song if you’re going to sing it.
So you go back to that first chord, your E minor. This is the picking pattern I’m going to play to complete together it sounds like this. So that’s basically just me playing the E minor chord, C, G and the D. With those, I’m doing four notes on each one, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. I’m playing exact the same notes on the strings, except that I’m playing the bass note fist for each chord.
So if you think about it, this E minor, the bass note is I guess you could say it’s the E string, but that’s not what you want to hear. You want to hear this A string second fret. So you’re going to play in the first chord formation, your E minor. I’m going to number the strings like this should be numbered one, two three, four, five, six. And you’re going to play the fifth string. The fifth string, fourth string, second string, and the third string. So the five and four string, you play, fifth string, fourth string. This should be down picks. And then the second string, third string should be up pick.
Then you change this to C and nine, and you’re going to play the same picking pattern, five, four, two, and three. Then you switch up here to this G, and the only thing it’s going to change for this G is instead of playing five, four, two, three, you’re now going to play six, four, two, three. The reason you’re going to do that is because your bass note is now changed up here to this low E string.
So after you play that, you see that third little picking is six, four, two, three. Then the last chord is a D. And since your root note and the bass note in the D is actually just this D string. Your one, two, three, four string, I just play four, three, two three.
Alright guys, one more time of that picking pattern. You start on your E minor chord, and your number in the strings is one, two, three, four, five, six from the bottom. And you’re playing five, four, two, three in the E minor. The E minor, is only tab so like an E minor seven or whatever. Then you switch to your C and nine. You play the same strings, five, four, two, three. Switch to your four-finger G, and you’re going to play six, four, two, and three.
Switch to your D and play four, three, two, three. So that together, it sounds like this. If you want to play this kind of like strum in your chords, the four chords you’ll play the same. The E minor, and when I play it along with the song when I was learning it just a couple of minutes ago, you just do like, I just did all down strums, because you don’t want to get into the fast strum pattern, because that’s not how the rhythm of the song is. It’s kind of a slow song.
So I just play it like four down notes like, just these four chords, E minor seven, C and nine, G… D, so that little part I was doing in case you’re wondering just down, down, down, down, up, switch chords, switch chords, and switch.
If you’re going to sing it or cover, I’d suggest do on the picking pattern, just like that. And when you get to singing it, strum it. If you’re kind of advance then you can handle the picking then the singing at the same time, then go for it. Good luck to you guys. I’m not going to tab this out in the info box because I think it’s also good exercise for you guys as far as the last video I did on Crush by David Archuleta.
I’m trying to push you guys to teach yourself strum patterns. You know, I also taught myself how to do strum patterns, and really it’s just practice. Listen to the song. And also I think it’s good for you guys to learn how to tab out stuff yourself. I had a lesson teaching how to read tabs. Well, you know this is a really easy song to tab out. Basically, all you got to do is sit down, a pen, draw six lines, number them E, A, D, G, B, E or letter them I guess, E, A, D, G, B, E.
And then whenever, you know, I tell you five, four, two, three, just write those numbers down in order. And then that’s all you need to know, it’s in the chord of E minor, you play with this string, fourth string and second string, third string. And the C, it’s the same thing, five, four, two, three, and the G, it’s six, four, two, three, and in the D, it’s four, three, two, three, so good luck to this song, guys. I hope it helps. Remember, December 25th, Christmas Day, freeandeasyguitar.com. It is going to be open to you guys. I’ve been doing a lot of work on it lately, and I got some cool stuff that you’re going to like. So hopefully it’s going to be a big help to you. So, take care. Good luck.
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