How to Play Sober by Pink

What’s up, Free and Music Guitar? It’s Aaron. The lesson I want to teach you right now is on the song by Pink called “Sober.” I’m basically going to teach you that little intro that you probably will recognize and then I’m just going to teach you the chords verse way out because basically we’re just starting the verse. They play the intro. So whenever I teach you the intro, you can play that repeatedly if you want to play only through the verse. And then you can play the chords if you don’t want to play that and then I’m going to teach you the chorus chords. So all right, the little intro sounds something like this, give me a second. [Demonstration] It’s something like that, okay. You can just play that repeatedly. [Demonstration] It’s something like that. So the way I’m going to teach you, I want you to take your pointer finger and this is going to be look different on what I’ve usually taught you. But I want you to take your pointer finger, all right. I want you to bar across all six strings, okay. The reason I’m doing this is when we get down to here, you need this base note and I want you to have right there the whole time so it’s less movement. So 6th fret, bar across all six strings, then I want you to take your ring and pinky, put them on a 8th frets and then two middle string. So your ring is on your D, pinky is on your G string, all right. And what you’re going to do is you’re only going to play, you’re going to try and play just this, the five, four, three strings. Okay, so you’re going to play. Okay, after you play the five, four, three, I actually want to—when I’m getting ready to move down, I’ll play this four-string again. It’s kind of like slide down, so it sounds like this. You can either play just five, four, three slide down to play, five, four, three or you can play that what I do. I go, [Demonstration]. So instead of just playing five, four and three when playing, five, four, three, four and I’m playing at four, last four right before you heard it slide down. [Demonstration] Okay, sorry I’m hopping around. I’m trying to remember how to play it. Bar across all six strings, 6th fret, middle two strings in the 8th fret, ring and pinky, okay. So you’re going to play five-string, four-string, three-string and then you can or cannot up to you to play the four-string again. So five, four, three and then slide everything down, four frets so your bar is now in the 2nd fret and your ring and pinky is now is on the D and G-strings on the 4th fret. And you’ll play the same thing, five-string, four, three, and you can optionally, you put a four here if you want. And then after that, the next is you’re going to play is you’re going to play the low E string with your pointer finger covering that 2nd fret. That’s why I want you to bar all six strings here. Even though you’re not playing slow enough, so you go [Demonstration]. Like we just talked about, and then put low E, okay, then in the six strings, then you play four. And then when you’re going to play the third string, your pinky finger was on the 4th fret before, you want to take your pinky off for just a minute and put your ring finger on that G string, on the 3rd fret. So you’re playing, six, four, three, four, and then you’re going to put your pinky finger back on in 4th fret. You’re going to play three-string, four-string, three-string, four-string, three-string, pull that pinky off and I’m going to play the four-string again. So use the tab, it would be able to help us with sounds like this. We’ll play it slow. [Demonstration] Okay, that’s the intro that I just played. There’s a little bit of variations that you can add into it on that last part. But, I would suggest just play it how I had it in the tab that I made. I made this tab. And then the only thing I would tell you to do is if during the verse, you want to play chords instead of the intro riff. You can play [Demonstration] Okay, here are the four chords I want you to play. You can play up here which is an Eb I believe. Now if you’re just strumming these chords, you don’t want to bar across all six. You just want to bar across in line five, on the 6th fret, ring and pinky on the two middle strings, okay. And you’re going to play [Demonstration] and I’ll slide down here [Demonstration]. Then I’ll move my bar up here to bar all six strings in your ring and pinky or in the five and four strings, 4th fret in this middle finger up here. [Demonstration] And then in the fourth chord, you’re going to bar across, one the 4th fret bar across the bottom five strings, ring and pinky there in the two middle strings, on your D. [Demonstration], same strum pattern, on your first three and your last one is [Demonstration] and I kind of mute like [Demonstration], kind of like that on my hand. So, the verse like we just talked about as I explain is [Demonstration]. Okay, if you don’t want to play that during the verse and you want to strum it, play this [Demonstration]. So, I’m going to have a tab for the four chords, don’t stress out. And then for the chorus, you’re going to play four chords too and you’re basically going to play the four chords I just taught to you for the—yeah. You’re going to play the four chords that I just taught to you for the verse. So you’re going to play this one [Demonstration], just strum pattern, while you’re up here in this Eb, Em. No, it’s an Eb. You just basically playing, just try playing top four strings, so you don’t need to do the bar and cover this B string. You don’t need to cover that on the 8th fret because you’re just trying to strum the top four strings. Okay, so you’re going play Eb and then you’re going to slide down here and this is your B chord. Remember, you don’t need to do this bar thing because you’re just playing top four strings, so this is enough. So Eb down to B, and strum pattern is down, down, up, down, down, up, switch, down, down, up, down, down, up, switch. This is an F#, down, down, up, down, down, up, switch. And this your C#, down, down, up, down, down, up, up, down. [Demonstration] So what I’ve said, if you don’t mute that low E string and you’re strumming this first chord, you would see how bad that sounds. You want to make sure this low E is muted. [Demonstration] And that’s what you’re going to play for the verse and the chorus. So, remember Eb to that is your B chord to an F# to your C#, C. [Demonstration] So, if you’re having trouble with the strum pattern, remember strum pattern doesn’t matter. It’s all about the rhythm. You can do all down strums, all down up. You don’t have to switch it. But, please don’t ask for the strum pattern. I kind of want to push you guys to start developing your own ear for strum pattern. So listen to it, 10, 20 times, how long you take and eventually you will get it, I’ll promise you even if it means skipping this strum pattern for this song and just coming back. So, please try and figure the strum pattern out for yourself. I’m not coughing out. I’ll give to you one more really quick. [Demonstration] There you go. So rewind that and watch it. Figure stuff out yourself. Find your own preferences and good luck with the song for freeandeasyguitar.com. Check it out.