How to Play One Last Breath by Creed Part One

Hey guys, what’s up? It’s Aaron. I’m back. From Nashville, I’ve got a video that I want to teach you guys. Sorry I’ve been AWOL for the last couple of days but this song that I want to teach you today is kind of long awaited. And I’ve been getting a lot of requests for it but… it’s called “One Last Breath” by Creed, and it will probably take one or two lessons to teach this. I have a link to the tab over here. It was tabbed by a guy, an Aaron Williams. I found it on UltimateGuitar.com. It is what I use for my tabs, for the most part except for country. Country tabs and I use CountryTabs.com. But, all right, so we’re on standard tuning. I’m going to teach you the first riff. And I’m going to teach you, well actually the first riff is kind of long, so I’m going to try and break it down into two parts. Then I’m going to teach you the second riff which is basically the strumming pattern for the verse. Then riff three, riff four, and then riff five is basically the same as the first part of riff one. The reason I say that is because on Aaron Williams’ tab, he has the bottom riff one, three times, riff tow A, two times, just so you know how many times you play each riff throughout the whole song, so it’s a good tab. All right, so the way that I start it out sounds like this. [Demonstration] That’s the first part of the riff, all right. So the way I want you to do it is you’re going to finger pick it. It’s going to be pretty difficult not too finger pick this, so if you want to learn this song and you’re not going to do finger picking, don’t worry, don’t stress out, just give it a shot and keep working at it, all right. So the first set of notes you’re going to do, take your pointer finger and put it on the second fret of your high E string, all right. The base note that you’re going to play for the first three times is actually this D string, this note. So the very first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to pick with your thumb. You’re going to pick your D string open and your pointer on the second fret down here, you’re going to pick that with your middle finger. So you’re going to pick the D string open, and the high E string second fret. All right you’re going pick those together… so you’re going to hit the D string, open base note so… all right. After that, the next note, you’re going to stretch this pinky up and play it on the fifth fret. I learned it on my acoustic guitar. You can play it on the acoustic the same way. It’s just a little easier with the electric… because you’re not supposed to push down this hard. All right, so the first note is at pointer finger second fret, high E, and then your thumb on the D string open so you play those together. Then D open, stretch that pinky up, fifth fret on the high E, then that D open again, base note. So right there it’s— [Demonstration] All right so after that part it goes, you are going to go [Demonstration], then you're going to play the high E open. You can take that pointer finger off… and hammer it down on to the second fret… so basically going… Then I will take this ring finger, put it right here on the third fret of your B string. That’s the next note you’re going to play. And then you’re going to play the G string… The tab has you play it, like a D with a pointer finger, whatever, on the second fret. I just played it open, actually. So I play it— [Demonstration] Like that. Check to see how good you guys can see this. I’m just going to try and scoop this a little bit, so you can see the neck a little bit better. There we go, all right. Figure out which way to go, all right. So you’re going to play— [Demonstration] So play that [Demonstration] middle finger’s third fret of the B… and play the B, D, so you’re going to go [Demonstration] all right. So[Demonstration], once you do that, you're going to play the base note but your base note changes. It’s now an open A. So you’re going to play the open A, then pointer finger’s going to go on the second fret of your B string. You’re going to play it open A, two, three… two, three, five. So you’re going to play open A, two, three, five. That’s your pointer on second, middle on the third, ring on five, all right. So you’re going to go [Demonstration] play that base note again, and this is probably the most difficult part of the whole song for me. After you play base note open A, two, three, five, and you play it base note. Then you’re going to have your middle finger on the third fret already. All right, you’re going to play this B string… hammer your pinky down… take it off… take your middle finger off, and put your middle finger back on. So it goes— [Demonstration] That’s basically how you’re going, you're still want to do it faster. So really, it goes like this— [Demonstration] Just like that, all right. So from the top. [Demonstration] Like that, all right now here’s a little part where the way I play it differs from how Aaron Williams has it tabbed out. All right, from here, he has you play like two, second fret A string, third fret B, second fret A. You can learn it that way if you want. The way I learned it, it doesn’t really sound the same as that. The way I learned sounds like this. I’m going to start from the beginning just so I don’t get lost. [Demonstration] And then I go straight into a B minor chord. Okay, it’s your bar across the second fret here, five strings. Middle finger goes on the third fret of your B string, and then pinky and ring go on the fourth frets of your two middle strings. All right, so once I do this [Demonstration] I get lead that middle finger… because you do that whole… you end on that middle finger. Leave that middle finger there. It’s like common. It’s got a placeholder, and that’s where it should be for the B minor. All right, when I get to the B minor, I pick the A string and the G string… at the same time as I play, the A and the G… the A again… A and G at the same time… then A by itself… then I play the B… so… so A and G… A by itself… B, G, so that together sounds like this [Demonstration]. And the last note there is just that B string again… you take your middle finger off… and hammer on… all right. So form the top. [Demonstration] All right, now I know this is probably a little fast for some of you guys. We’re going to do that, I’m going to do that one more time. So here we go. [Demonstration] B minor [Demonstration] and then after that, the next chord is, you just go up and play G chord, G bar. So you bar across all six, and then the bar chord, and you’re going to play E, A, D G, then E, B, G, D. So you’re going to play the top four. One, two, one, two, three, four… work way back down. All right so I’m going to play that riff one more time. This is just the first part of riff one. I know it’s long but we’re going to get it. So it goes like this. [Demonstration] That last, this is not the one, two, three, four. You’re not going to do that. You want to make an open chord G, sorry about that guys. Open position G and you’re going to play the base, the E [Demonstration] Okay you’re going to play [Demonstration] the E, D, B, G… so E, D, B, G… then D, B, then you’re going to play third fret and second fret of high E--