How to Play White Horse by Taylor Swift - Part 1

What’s up everybody! The song I’m going to teach you tonight is by Taylor Swift, it’s called “White horse.” We got a lot of request for it and I heard that in the radio, I actually really enjoyed it. So, it’s going to be a finger picking song if you want it to be, then kind of at the end I’ll show you that if you don’t want finger pick it, if you just want to strum it, so I hope you guys can see this all right. My guitar is in standard tuning, E, A, D, G, B, E, no capo or anything on the song. Now, when you look at the tab, I want to give you–I’m going to have a tab up top that has a set of chords and basically these chords if you see a C, go and just automatically assume it’s the same C and this is a G, and this is an A minor because I’m going to have a little bit of variation to it to give you pretty much rough, I think it’s the exact sound that she plays. I maybe off on a few notes, but I think I got it pretty close and now I’m going to give you a little finger picking tab which is I’m going to teach first. All right. The main juice to this song, I kind of play it through quick sound something like this. [Demonstration] Okay, one thing you might have noticed about that is in this little kind of picking or if your pointer finger and your pinky never move the whole time. So, the first chord I want you to start out is I want you to make a regular C chord, pointer finger on your two string, 1st fret, your middle finger goes in the 2nd fret of your four string with your D string and your ring finger is going to be on the 3rd fret of your five string. Now, I want you to add your pinky here to the 3rd fret of the high E. So, that note rings up. That’s the first picking note you have here and the whole thing. So, you’re going to be playing this with four fingers. If you only want to use three and you say you’re not comfortable raising your ring finger and just want to use these three, that’s fine. I’ll play with my thumb, the first chord in the C chord, so you have the C chord with your pinky finger on the 3rd fret of your high E, you’re going to play the thumb, you’re going to play your five string which is the string your ring finger is on. And then your pointer, middle and ring are going to play this bottom three strings. So, your pointer is going to play the three string, the middle is going to play in the two, your ring is going to play the one string. And you’re going to pluck all four of those at the same time twice. So, one, two, if you feel comfortable pluck muting, it can be like you know with the [demonstration] but that’s just kind of up to you. If you’re not good at as your progression get a little better, so just keep practicing. All right, you’re playing the five with your thumb, three is your pointer, two is the middle and the one string high E with this ring finger and you’re going to play, [demonstration] second time. Then after that, you’re going to play one, two, three 322 your pointer. Then, you ‘re going to leave three of these fingers the same, the only one you’re going to move is you’re going to move this ring finger up and you’re going to put it right behind your middle finger and your middle finger is probably going to slide up that string a little bit as you move it up and this is actually an A minor chord with your pinky here on the 3rd fret of the high E. Then, you’re going to pick the exact same pattern of strings, the five, three, two, one and you play [demonstration] just like we did earlier. That’s in the beginning, so you’re going to see [demonstration] with the Am, Okay, the third chord you’re going to play is an F variation. So, when you see F, don’t think its bar, you can play like, but to get the sound I think Taylor Swift uses, you’re going still and going to have this here, you’re going to leave that pointer finger and your pinky finger right where they are. All right, pointer finger in this 1st fret on the two string which is your second string up your B and your pinky is on the high E 3rd and while your fingers work, your ring finger was actually on your three string on the 2nd fret and your middle finger is on the fourth string, 2nd fret for the Am. You’re going to take your ring and you’re going to move it up to the fourth string on the 3rd fret and your middle finger is going to be on the three string, 2nd fret. So basically, this is going to be your F chord. So, in your F chord, you’re going to pick the bottom four strings, with the thumb and you play the four string and that’s where your ring finger is, your pointer finger is going to play the three string which where the middle finger is 2nd fret. Your middle finger is going to play the 2nd string and your pointer finger is on the 1st fret on that string and your ring is going to play the high E string is your one string that your pinky is on the 3rd fret, put one four strings. Take them off twice, then one, two, three okay. And then for the next one is going to be a G but I need to do to get this G is just pick your ring and your middle finger is up, put your ring finger on the 3rd fret of your low E and your middle finger is going to be 2nd fret of A string. And then, you’re going to pick the bottom three again with these three fingers and you’re going to pick your great sound with your thumb, one two, three. So, all together is going like this. [Demonstration] So, the one thing I realized is when you’re in that C chord with the pinky on the high E, you’re going to be playing the same, you’re going to pick the five to your thumb, three, two, one pick, pick, one, two, three. Then you go to A minor and play the same picking, the strings. Then you’re going to play–the thumb is going to play the four string instead of the five, I’ll give you the first two thumbs and you play [demonstration] and then up here on the G. Now, when I play that, when I play it along with the song, I actually play that for most of the verses in the chorus, you can actually play it too, there are some chord progressions like that. You can also if it’s your preference you can mix it in. So, instead of playing, you might play this for the chorus stuff [demonstration] that part for the verse that we just talked about, and then during the chorus, you know the chords are C, to Am, to F, to G. Now, instead of picking them, you might strum them like you might play [demonstration] okay, so I’m just playing the same chord, same finger positions and everything as we do in the intro I’m just playing, down, down, up, up, down, up, switching down, down, up, up, down, up, up, down, up switch down, down, up, down, up G, down, down, up, up, down. [Demonstration] So, that strum pattern again is down, down, up, up, down, up. Another thing I kind of mess around with and you guys this is something don’t ask for the tabs for this part because I’m trying to push you guys in this small steps into learning stuff for yourself. So, say you don’t like the finger picking, but you want to play the pick, but you don’t want to strum, you can play the same chords and you can just start the first B on your base note. So, if it’s a C or A minor chord, you’re going to start on the five string. [demonstration] if it’s the F chord there, you’re going to start on the fourth string [demonstration] and if it’s a G chord, you’re going to start to your low E string. So, if you want to pick it, you could just make out a song you might sound like this [demonstration] And the important thing I realized about that is I have a picking with end chords video. This is all I’m doing right here is picking within this chords that just taught you. The important thing of picking within the chord is just start with the base note. All right, so C chord, that’s your base note, after that, you can really pick any picking pattern you want. You can tell it sounds good and that’s really fun too when you start to practice and learn your own picking patterns. So, as far as the chord structure goes, like I said, the verse is just C to Am, to F, to G.