Hello, how are you doing?
It is Justin here for another guitar lesson.
This time we're checking out
possibly the easiest song of all time,
which is "Feelin' Alright"
We're doing the Joe Cocker version,
but there are lots of different versions of this tune.
If you're going to play along with his version,
you're going to need a capo.
In fact, most of the versions that I listened to this morning,
require the use of a capo.
Really, all you need is a capo, and your chords A and D.
It's pretty straightforward.
If you're doing a Joe Cocker version, you need the capo on the third fret,
which is what I'm going to teach you today.
If you want to do the Lulu version, you need the capo at the 8th fret,
which would be good for a girl singer.
If you're going to do the Dave Mason version,
you want the capo on the 2nd fret.
And if you're going to do the Grand Funk Railroad version,
like play along with their track,
you need the capo on the 5th fret,
but the chords and the sequence all stay the same all the time
for this simple version.
You can do all sorts of fancy stuff with this tune, if you wanted to.
So, the most super-duper easy version of this,
it's one bar of A and one bar of D.
Repeat, over and over again, for the whole song.
So, if we just do four strums in each bar on the A chord,
♪ We've got to have a change of scene... ♪
Change the D back to the A:
♪ Cause every night I have the strangest dreams... ♪
♪ Imprisoned by the way things used to be... ♪
♪ I left here on my own or, so it seems... ♪
And that's it. I mean, the chorus is the same:
♪ Feelin' alright, oh-ohhh... ♪
♪ I ain't feelin' too good myself, oh-ohhh... ♪
You can imagine doing this for a whole song, though,
probably might get a little bit [simulates snoring].
You want to practice it so you can do that first,
but you probably want to make it a little more fancy if you can.
So, a really good way of making it a little more fancy
is to change the chords a little bit,
and to make them into an A7 and a D7 chord.
If you haven't learned those chords, don't worry about it.
Just stick to doing your A and the D.
But once you've learned your A7 and D7,
you might want to incorporate those.
Make the chords a little bit fancy.
Or maybe use A and D for the verses,
and A7 and D7 for the choruses or something.
That might be an interesting way of doing it. Up to you.
But if we look at those chords now,
we just have A7 [strums chord] to D7 [changes chord].
♪ I ain't feelin' too good myself, oh-ohhh... ♪
♪ Feelin' alright, oh-ohhh... ♪
♪ I ain't feelin' too good myself, oh-ohhh... ♪
Still not quite there, is it?
That little thing, that little magic ingredient that we need is the rhythm.
Now, because it's kind of an uptempo, funky kind of tune,
generally, we'd use 16th note strumming,
which isn't covered in my beginners' course.
It'll be touched on in the intermediate course,
and it's also explained in my DVD called,
"Really Useful Strumming Techniques, Volume 2,"
but you don't really need to go through that
if you just want to get this tune down now.
What you need to know is the real basic thing about 16th notes,
is that you're going to strum four movements for each beat.
So, in a bar, we've got 1-2-3-4 beats,
and each one of those are going to be divided by 4,
which would be down-up-down-up.
So we'd have, 1-2-3-4 / 1-2-3-4 / 1-2-3-4 / 1-2-3-4
Now, if you just strummed continuously like that,
it might sound a bit more interesting, but it's probably not exactly right.
But that would be: ♪ I'm feelin' alright, oh-ohhh... ♪
♪ I ain't feelin' too good myself, oh-ohhh... ♪
Slightly more advanced again, if you want.
If you're capable of it, is to get some accents going,
and/or not have accents and just strum these chords,
but keep your hand moving.
And if you're going to do that, if you want a suggested one,
you could muck around with it, by all means, and improvise a bit,
but if you want me to suggest one, then you might want to try:
[strumming] down-down-up-up-up-down / down-down-up-up-up-down
[strumming & speaking] See the way my hand keeps moving, all the time.
down-down-up-up-up-down / down-down-up-up-up-down, etc.
♪ ...alright, oh-ohhhh. I ain't feelin' too good myself, oh-ohhh... ♪
♪ Feelin' alright, oh-ohhh... You're feelin' too good yourself, oh-ohhh ♪
And with these two cords, the cool thing about this tune
is that you can really... you can have a really good muck around with it.
There's not really any set strumming, you can really play about with the rhythm
Now the actual chords themselves, for those more advanced players
C7
and F7
So of course, if you wanted to, you could
definitely play up here: C
F7
And any variations of that if you want to get all clever
and start putting in funky chords
And it is actually a really good tune for playing about with
C dominant and F dominant chords.
For those more advanced players that have probably got this far
which I guess is probably not too many, most of you would have left,
when I started going A and D, but you can have a bit of a play around
with experimenting with all your dominant chords, you want to
check out my "Funk Guitar Rhythm" lessons
and that'll explain all of that.
Have some fun with it,
I'll see you again for another lesson sometime real soon.
Take care! Bye-bye!