How to Play the Song Don't Panic by Coldplay

All right my little Coldplay fans. Here we go. We’re going to learn “Don’t Panic” out of Coldplay’s Parachutes album, first cut. And really easy song to play. I know I say it all the time, it really is. We’re talking about just some open chords really. They even have this album as F chord and not your typical F bar chord, but we’ll get into that. No need for a capo if you can just play this on the acoustic guitar. It's going to sound something like this— [Demonstration] Let's talk about that, it's real easy. You see, and look at my right, I'm looking at the chart here which is available at yourguitarstagecom. Here we go. So an F chord, this is your basic F chord. If you don’t know these open chords, you’ve got to learn them. Check out the website. This is an F chord but we’re not going to play it like this. We’re going to play it as actually an F major 7 and an F major 7 is like this, putting these two fingers down right there and 2nd finger is on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string, the 1st finger is on the 1st fret on the 2nd string and the high E is played open. So, your F chord is actually [Demonstration]. Now, I’m bringing my thumb around here to mute that E string there. I’ll talk about strumming and all that in just a second. Let's just concentrate on the chords for just a minute. So here’s our F chord [Demonstration]. And pretty much for the whole time you can either play an full on F chord [Demonstration] or this version of the F chord [Demonstration] which you may know already, basically it's this, but barring these two and muting that top note up there, so [Demonstration]. So that’s my F chord. You can either play that one [Demonstration] or this one [Demonstration]. That’s going to be easier and actually for this song it sounds better. So F major 7 on the chart there's an F but it's an F major 7. So, we’re talking 4 beats per chord here. The intro is going to have 4 bars on the F. [Demonstration] Okay, so let's talk about that for a second. So the chords we got are F major 7 [Demonstration], verse is going to be A minor [Demonstration], C [Demonstration], F major 7 [Demonstration] and just repeats that. The chorus is going to be D minor-A minor-G-D minor-F, so – [Demonstration] So that’s the chorus. I’m looking at the chart here and that is the whole song. I mean that is it. Let’s talk about strumming for just a second. What I like to do for this strumming part right here is I do a combination of mutes and breaks. Breaking is when you kind of [Demonstration] break across the strings instead of [Demonstration], straight on strum, like a staccato kind of thing. We’re not doing that. We’re— [Demonstration] It kind of gives it a – kind of a Spanish feel to it, if you will. [Demonstration] Then we’re also doing some mutes. So what I’m doing is with the right hand take the fleshy part of your palm and when you hit a chord, just kind of karate chop [Demonstration] right on to the guitar. It's really nothing more complicated or easier than that, so [Demonstration]. Get the chord, karate chop at that part of your palm. And of course, you're going to get more finesse out of it. Finesse add it as you go on, but that’s the basic technique there. So, I'm doing like -- [Demonstration] So, I’m strumming [Demonstration], strumming kind of a [Demonstration]. That’s what I’m doing. I’m doing it down— [Demonstration] And at the end you got to [Demonstration]. So— [Demonstration] Okay, so all these songs, play it slowly at first. That’s what you’ve got to do. No one started off playing these songs up to speed, playing it fast. No. Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, name any great guitar player of out times, they all started out where you started. Slow and steady and wins the race. Keep up, just keep practicing and don’t get discouraged. It's just a matter of time and a matter of hours on the instrument. That’s about it on this one. If you have any questions about capo’s, chords any of that good stuff check out yourguitarstage.com. If you want a chart to this song, check out yourguitarstage.com to find out how you can get a copy of it. Until then, keep practicing and subscribe. Keep checking. I’ve got more videos coming.