Now we come to our first actual song that we're going to learn to play using music notation, which is all Lang zine. It's a traditional song that is sung on New Year's Eve in many parts of the world, you probably note, let's talk through it before playing it. First thing to notice is that I've written records above the stave, so you can see what chords would go with the melody if you'd like to strum along. Obviously, if you're playing alone, you'd either be playing the chords or the melody. If you're playing with a buddy though, one person could strum the chords while the other plays the melody. In most cases, there is just one chord per bar.

So if you were strumming along you just play the chord on the first beat of the bar and hold it for the duration of the whole bar. Notice that in bar seven and 15, the three chords to the bar, a minor, F and G. In these cases, you'd play the A minor for the first two beats, F for the third beat, and G for the fourth beat. Of course, we see an option The load symbol under the treble clef. So we know that this piece of music will be played an octave lower than it normally would without it. There's no key signature so we know we were in the key of C, and we'll be using the C major scale to play the melody. Tom signature is four four, indicating that there are four beats in every bar, and the tempo is set to 90 beats per minute.

Now, notice the weird little bar right in the beginning of the music with the dotted half wrist indicating silence for the first three beats of the bar, followed by a quarter note on the fourth beat. We haven't discussed this yet, but what we have here is known as a leading bar, also known as a pickup measure. This is used when the melody of a song starts before the first bar of the music. The way to approach this is to set your metronome to 90 beats per minute. When you're ready to begin the piece, listen to one or two bars, and make sure you can't sing with it even if it's just in your head. At the end of the leading bar, play the pickup mode on the fourth beat.

Before continuing with the rest of the melody. Notice that we're making good use of dotted notes. We have dotted quarter notes and just about every bar, we also find dotted half notes in the fourth, eighth and 12th bars. Next, let's check out the high notes and low notes of the song. Just to get an idea of the boundaries we will be playing within. The lowest note is the note G on the first line of the stave, which we played on the open G string as you know, the first G note is found in the pickup major.

The highest note of the song is the node A on the first ledger line above the stave. We see this note for the first time in bar for now, we haven't practiced this note as part of the C major scale yet, but it's pretty straightforward. All you do is stretch across to the high E string fifth fret and play the note with your pinky. Granted you will be going out of position in In order to reach this load, but that's okay since it doesn't really interrupt the flow of the melody. Now let's have a listen to how old lens on sounds. Remember we'll have a countin bar before the pickup bar begins.

Now let's break down how to approach learning a new melody. Hey, you want to slow it way down. For instance, you may want to slow this melody down from 90 beats per minute to 60 beats per minute, just while you're learning it. Be you want to be sure of the note values. A great way to do this is just to clap out the values of an entity at 60 beats per minute like this. See, you want to be sure of the notes you're playing in other words, the actual pictures and where they'd be located on your fretboard.

If you know how the C major scale looks on the stave, and how to transfer those notes onto your guitar, this process will be 10 times easier. For example, we've already seen that the notes in the lead in bar is a G note, which can be heard by playing your G open string. Then the first three notes of the first bar are the notes C, which can be played on your B string first fret. The last note in the first bar is the note E, which as you know can be heard by playing your high E open string. The first note of the second bar is the note D, which can be played on your B strings, third fret. And then for the rest of bar two, as well as for the first three notes of bar three.

We're moving between the notes C, D, and E, which we've already discussed. On the fourth note of bar three, we move to the note G, which can be played on your high E string, third fret. Then in bar four, we move to the highest note of the melody the note a, which can be played on the fifth fret of your high E string. By analyzing the melody and this way, you can begin to form quite a clear mental map of its layout on your fretboard before you even pick up your guitar. De once you're confident with the node values and you've met the metadata on your fretboard, you may want to just break it into manageable sections and learn one or two bars at a time. So for example, you could first learn the opening phrase like this.

Then you could add the next phrase, like so. Next, you could put the two phrases together. You carry on in this fashion until you've got the whole melody under your fingers. You will learn a piece of music way faster and remember it better if you use this approach of breaking it into small chunks as opposed to trying to tackle the whole thing in one go. Next, download the PDF of old lengths on and use the steps we discussed in this video to learn the melody on your fretboard.