How to Play the Song Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles

All right. Today we’re going to learn how to play “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles. It's a really easy song and if you know how to play a C chord [Demonstration], and an E minor chord [Demonstration], you pretty much know the songs. I’m referring to a chart, this thing that I’m looking over to my right hand. I’m looking at my chart right now that’s on my computer screen. If you wanted to get hold to this chart check out yourguitarstage.com. and get the information on there on how to get the chart and hundreds of others. Check it out. All right, so here we go, a C and an E minor [Demonstration]. If you don’t know how to play those 2 chords, check out some of my other videos and also check out yourguitarstage.com to find out how to do that. But here’s a C chord [Demonstration], and our E minor chord [Demonstration]. Now, the only other chords that we have –variations of the E minor chord and in fact, the E minor 7 which normally play an E minor like this [Demonstration], but in this case, for the chorus we’re going to playing it with the 1st and 2nd finger because we’re going to be using our pinky and our ring finger to play some other notes that embellish the chorus. So for the chorus; here are our chords, an E minor 7 which we could play it like this [Demonstration] or like this [Demonstration], but we’re playing it in a different way. We want that E minor 7 to be right here at our pinky, so it's going to sound like this [Demonstration]. An E minor 7, ring finger is going to go right here on our 2nd fret. Not that is changing, we’re just moving our pinky, lifting it up and adding our ring finger [Demonstration], that’s called an E minor 6 chord. The 3rd chord in the chorus is a C with an E in the base. The C chord is like this [Demonstration] and if we add the E on the base, it would sound like this [Demonstration]. And our last chord is an E minor [Demonstration]. Let’s talk about the intro and the verse. So the verse or the intro and I’m going to be – part of singing, I’ll be kind of humming over this, but we got— [Demonstration] That was the intro and verse. Chorus is going to be something like this, I open the chords up, I don’t do much muting, we’ll talk about muting, talk about rhythms in just a second here. So for the chorus is going to go-- [Demonstration] Okay, literally that’s the whole song, you know those two parts. So, let's talk about rhythms for just a second. The rhythm that I’m using here is a 1-2 and 4; 1-2 and 4…. And the rhythm would be like this— [Demonstration] If you don’t know how to do this strums, check out the website. I’ve got instructional on there and I also have an instructional video on strumming, so check it out. So verses, is going to be like-- [Demonstration] That’s what we’ve got as far as the rhythm; and during the choruses, I’m just doing the same thing opened up— [Demonstration] I’m just checking on my time to make sure I’m not going over my allotted Youtube 10mins. The other thing is during the verse you could also just do like— [Demonstration] Let’s talk about that in just a minute. Let's talk about what I'm doing on the right hand here, so for the intro— [Demonstration] So I'm just doing just a straight 1-2 end and 4 and….I’m just doing this open. No mutes. But then when the verse start, I’m doing kind of like [Demonstration]. Okay, let me show you this. What I’m doing is I’m strumming down but the same time I was strumming, I'm taking this fleshy part of my palm and hitting the strings. So I’m doing like [Demonstration]. So along with the strum coming down muting [Demonstration]. It makes this kind of sound [Demonstration]. Work on that, okay? It’s going to take a little practice, a little awkward at first but you’ll get it. It's awkward for everybody but you’ll get it. Then again for the choruses, open it up. Don’t do this muting here, just open it up, so— [Demonstration]. Make sure on that C chord that it's not just a C, but a C with an open E [Demonstration]. That’s during the chorus. During the verse, you’ll close it up. You’ll take that thumb and you’ll bring it over and mute that low E string when you’re hitting your C [Demonstration]. Because when see guitar players doing this big strums and you don’t hear any sound or notes it is because they’re doing mutes. We’re muting the C chord [Demonstration]. We’re muting that note. Well, hopefully this video has helped you out, just keep checking back. I’ve got new videos going up almost everyday. Check out yourguitarstage.com., there's a lot of informative information on that eBook. So anyhow, keep practicing and we’ll see you back here soon.