How to Play It's the Same Old Song on Acoustic Guitar

Hey Rhythm Strummers! Let me show a really cool and easy way to play this great Motown tune. [Demonstration] Now, I can only show you a few seconds of that song in these free videos, but let me show you a strum pattern and some chords that will work on that song and a whole bunch of others. Okay so let’s take a look at these chords first, they’re supper easy. The first one is just C and then we’re going to do a D minor 7, which is a lot easier than it sounds, for me it's even easier than a plain old D minor. And then a G, and there’s a few different ways to play the G, I like this one that’s got this finger in it, all people play it like this, that’s okay too. All right, now let’s take a look at the strum pattern and we have a series of down and up, alternating arrows and you’ll notice that the arrows that are over beats 2 and 4 are not only bold, but they have excess of rhythm and then or in top they have Ws and so it’s a fairly complex system that we have at RhythmStrummer.com, but you’ll catch on to it pretty quick if you just check out our technique library lessons and our free lessons. And so just a quick explanation for now is that the bold means that you stress that, that stroke a little bit more. So if you run a G chord that would just be like [Demonstration]. Then when you have the X to it that means that it becomes a scratch stroke, so there’s actually no chord sounding and no note sounds so it will be like this [Demonstration]. And then when you add the W to it, that makes it a whack! Which is a simulation of a snare drum sound and that’s also called the backbeat and you hear a lot in rock bands and rock music. So let’s take a G chord and I’ll demonstrate what this whole strum pattern sounds like on just a G chord, so it's going to sound like this— [Demonstration] Now, when I’ve shown this whack thing to other students, I found that it takes a while to get this actual sound down, because it’s kind of confusing, you got to take your fist and you’ve got to hit the strings of the guitar, so that they certainly hit the fret board, make that slapping kind of a sound--that kind of sound. But then you also have to end up so that your pick is below the strings, so that you can do it up stroke right after that. So it has to be like whack, up, [Demonstration]. So you might just want to practice that for a good long time, until your hand gets used to it, because you’re sort of kind to do a combination of coming straight down the strings and down stroking. So that when you know them you can do your up stroke right after it, so back to the step just for a while— [Demonstration] So then when you get to it, you can do that then put it on the context of one whole strum pattern like this— [Demonstration] It will really be worth it to get this one together because every rock song you ever tried to play on acoustic guitar, you would be glad you know how to do this. It makes a sound like a whole band [Demonstration] all right then stop. So then what we want to do is take those other chords and integrate them in with the strum pattern. So let’s try the pattern on C. [Demonstration] It's a really good practice to try this thing steady, even a better practice if you’re trying to talk while this thing is steady. In fact, I think I’ll do a section the technique library RhythmStrummer.com on talking while playing at the same time or we sing and playing at the same time, so definitely check this out. [Demonstration] Okay, let’s stop here. Now let’s check out the D minor 7, so that’s going to be just barring with your first finger over the first two strings and then with your 2nd finger on the 3rd string, 2nd fret. And then you want to make sure you reach around to your thumb and mute that low E, because it won’t fit in to the chord. But those other open strings will, an A and D, so let’s do that one and do the same pattern on that. [Demonstration] Now you can get that same just stress on 2 and 4 without having a whack and you’ll see when I teach you the song lesson at the site, on the song that in the verses, I didn’t do the whack, I only did in the chorus, so that adds some variation and interest in the song. So just a quick demonstration and work from [Demonstration] to adding the whack [Demonstration]. That’s a really good skill to have, but right now, you just get the whack and stop. Okay, so now we’re going to take that pattern and we’re going to do it with a chord progression that uses those chords I showed to you earlier. So it’s going to be one pattern on C, one pattern on D minor 7, and one pattern on G, and then the last pattern on C and then we’ll repeat that, so it will sound like this-- [Demonstration] Now, I'm going to do it a little bit slower, okay so this is new to you, so you can hang with me. So get your guitar, so let’s go-- [Demonstration] And because Youtube only allows 10 minutes that’s why I have to stop, but we’d loved to see you at RhythmStrummer.com and if you go there, I can teach you the rest of this song and I can teach you to the way it goes in the real world and use your guitar and I’m really excited about having the opportunity to do that, so we’ll see you later.