It’s too much to describe in words, but basically it’s just an Em chord, a simple melody and then the A chord, but it fits together nicely on acoustic. In this lesson I show you how to play Gary Jules Mad World on one guitar string.The song was written by the band Tears For Fears in 1982, but became more famous relatively recently after it was sung by Gary Jules. Now for the fun part! I arranged the piano part into a simple chord melody that pretty much anyone can play with a little bit of practice.
Next we learn the Chorus, which is even easier than the verse. Once you can play the chord shapes comfortably, and play the strumming pattern several times in a row without stopping, it means you’re ready to try playing the verse, a little slower than the actual recording. If you need extra help with it, I go over it in my eBook and course. This song uses the MOST COMMON STRUMMING PATTERN EVER! I quickly break it down and teach you how to learn this pattern. Once we’re comfortable with the switching, we take a look at the strumming pattern. I show you some tips and tricks that make the switching a LOT easier and then we put that to use as we work our way through the verse chords, in order, using downstrokes only. The lesson begins with the chord shapes: Em, G, D, A – that’s it for the whole song. We’ll be following the Gary Jules one, since it fits on an acoustic quite well, but this tutorial is still valid for the original and any other versions of the song you may come across. It was originally written by ‘Tears For Fears’ and was later covered by Gary Jules (and used in the film Donnie Darko).
Hey everyone! In this lesson I’m going to show you how to play Mad World.