 Throughout this songwriting
part of the course,
there's gonna be
some stuff that's
gonna be geared towards
absolute beginners,
intermediate players,
and advanced players.
This part is for the
absolute beginners.
Like you don't know
that what the world can
be with you as a guitar player.
And I'm here to
show you that right
now-- within a
matter of minutes,
that you can be a songwriter.
So we'll start like this.
So if you're holding
a guitar in your hands
and you can play a couple
of notes on the guitar,
you're well on your way
to being a songwriter.
You don't have to even know
the names of the strings.
For the moment,
let's just call it
the fattest string,
the one closest to you.
It happens to be the E string.
But play that string.
[GUITAR NOTE]
Great job.
OK.
[LAUGHING] And then
pick any of the--
pick a dot.
The first, second, or third.
Let's take the first dot,
just for the sake of argument.
And so all you're
gonna do is play
those two notes, one at a time.
[GUITAR NOTE]
And now the dot.
[GUITAR NOTE]
OK.
Practice that until you're
able to play both of those.
Now just pick a number
between one and four.
Let's just say four is
the number that you chose.
Play that fat open string
four times in a row.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
Pretty good.
Try it again.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
Sounds like the fat open
note four times in a row.
Now, that second note, which
is this dot here, how about
let's pick another number.
Two.
All right, so we're gonna
play that twice in a row.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
One more time.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
Now let's put it all together.
The fat note four times,
the dot two times.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
Now repeat.
One, two, three, four.
One, two.
One, two, three, four.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
I-- we just wrote a song.
On your own guitar, pick any
notes, any dots, any numbers.
Play them in a consecutive
order and repeat,
and then you're a songwriter.
There's no mysterious mystique.
You and Paul McCartney
are now songwriters, OK?
There's a longer route
to writing "Let It Be,"
but there's no
difference between you,
as a person who can hold a pick
and have a guitar in your hand,
to become a songwriter
right now today.
The same thing applies
with playing simple chords.
If you can look-- like, I've
got a six-year-old kid at home.
And the other day, I
was like, I'm gonna
teach you how to write a song.
He said, dad, that's impossible.
I said, no it's not.
We did the same principle.
He just held his
finger right here.
It's an E minor 7 chord, but
you don't need to know that.
Just hold your
finger right there
and strum all the strings.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
And now put that finger on
the dot on the fattest string.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
For the sake of our argument,
let's do our four strums
on the first one, two
strums on the second one.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
Let's speed it up and see
if it sounds like punk rock.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
And you're a songwriter.
Songwriters are just people
that put notes and chords
in a certain order and play
them a certain number of times
there's nothing more
to it than that.
I discovered that in my
basement with my punk rock band,
and the heavens opened.
All of a sudden, I
wanted to play guitar
because I don't have to wait.
I didn't have to laboriously
slog through a tar
pit of tiresome lessons.
I wasn't working the tar, I was
immediately playing the guitar.
And so now you can
play the guitar, too,
and write some songs.
[GUITAR SOLO]
