It's Only Love, Beatles Cover

Wow! This song really challenged me; fast strumming and bar chords from the first fret to the 6th fret. It took me months to get this one day, good thing it’s only two versus. Anyway, this is my best take.
It’s Only Love as taught by Jerry’s Guitar Bar.

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Nicely done Benji. That doesn’t look easy, the practice clearly paid off!

Good stuff, Benji :grinning_face:
You;ve done most of the donkey work on this one and are nearly there.
As a lazy guitarist, I’m always looking for ‘shortcuts’ :roll_eyes:
Rather than flying up from the e minor on the first fret to barre the Bb on the sixth, did you think of just playing an A-shaped barre on the first fret instead?
And if I was going to travel up to barre the sixth on the C e Bb F G sequence, I’d play the C like you do, then keep my ring finger on the same string, sliding down one fret and add my pinky on the fourth string to play the e minor. That way both those fingers are on the right strings, ready to slide up to the 6th fret. Then you just slide back down to the F, and while I’m still in shape, I’d play the next G as a barre as well to avoid changing shape again :wink:
The other thing I’d do, is slow the whole song down until you can keep your hand moving continuously to the rhythm without any pauses/changes in tempo.
But they’re only minor niggles. Well done! :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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It’s a great Beatles song Benji and I enjoyed your version. Really good vocal too. Brian @brianlarsen has given you some chord shortcut tips although I suspect the Jerry’s guitar bar version is what he (Jerry) reckons is closest to the original voicing.
I’m not sure why but I don’t think your strum pattern is quite right. I think you should double check with Jerry on that.
Well done, you should be pleased with the work you’ve put into this one. :grinning_face:

Nice one! Enjoyed your singing and playing!

Now I’ve got to search for the song, but I couldn’t remember that the original was as quick strums as your version?

Great! Another Beatles fan around in our forums! :slight_smile:

Difficult struming on its own, further incresed with singing at the same time. You did very well!

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Looked at the original now - ah, you’re really close!

But you make it harder for yourself, playing the bit that is the fastest even faster than it should be. Maybe - like Justin often suggests, separate the work into chords and also do some strumming with all strings muted along with the original (or you can hear the guitar better in the Anthology version) or Jerry’s version - again and again until you got the rhythm down.
I once tried to strum that Somewhere over the rainbow version from the really big hawaii ukulele man… over and over… never got up to his speed :slight_smile: but got lots better at least.

One day, I’d like to learn “It’s only love” too! :slight_smile:

Hi Benji, I love this song and you’re doing a great job on it! A very challenging one indeed!

I echo Brian on this…

Keeping the hand moving on that fast 16th notes strumming…that is easier said than done…but we’ll get there I’m sure…hopefully me as well :roll_eyes:

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Thanks mathsjunky, still a bit of a work in progress, but most songs always are…

Thanks brian! So I tried the a shape b chord, and so many of strings don’t ring, that the sound of the e shape for the b flat was a lot better, so I decided to go with that. I tend to avoid a shape bars when I can. The g sometimes needs to be played open for the sus chord note on I think it’s the d string, not everytime, but during the verse, during the chorus I can play the g barre chord. As far as the speed goes, it’s just still a work in progress, but I need to move on for a bit. I would try to slow it down in practice, which helped when I played it at speed, but this is one song that I find is harder to play slow because of the amount of strums to the bar. Anyway, I’m not done with it, but I’m done with it for now… Thanks for the pointers and the listen… :folded_hands:

Hi sairfingers! I think I don’t quite have the intro and outro right. The rest of the song is played with a more simplified pattern, which is still a little choppy. It’s definitely still a work in progress and I’ll keep coming back to it, but I need to take a break from it for a bit. I’ll try playing along with Jerry’s version, that might help going forward…

Hi domi7, I’ve had trouble with the speed of this song due to the strumming pattern. This is the first song that I’ve played in this particular style. I think what I need to do is go back and play along with the teacher and see if I can make an adjustment. I used to play it even faster, so this is actually the best I’ve done so far… :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: Still some work to do on it, but I need to take a break from it for a minute…

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Thanks Boris! Definitely a learning experience that I benefitted from, and still a work in progress…

Go for it! It’s a really good challenge and I benefit from it in more ways than I know I’m sure. I’m not done with it, I’m never really done with any cover I play, there’s always something to improve on or try, but I’ll take a break from it for a minute. Playing along with the teacher’s version is what I was planning on doing in the future, but I hadn’t considered muting the strings, good idea…

Hey, I think I may have accidently flagged your post. I hope nothing comes of it. I tried to undue it but don’t know if I really flagged it or not. I didn’t select a reason, so hopefully not. Sorry about that!

Oops, looks like I repeated myself… Also, I think I may have flagged your post by accident when I was trying to edit my response. I hope nothing comes of it. I didn’t select a reason, so maybe they won’t bother with it, but it doesn’t look like I can undo it… :smirking_face:

It’s me again, Benji :roll_eyes: :rofl:

You’re right to park this after recording and only revisit when the itch returns.

One of the advantages of sharing progress and pointing out stumbling blocks, is that you sometimes stimulate others to learn as well.

Something was bothering me about this and made me curious enough to seek out Jerry’s lesson as well as relisten to the original and even separate out the guitar part of the original with ‘Moises’. The Beatles are always worth listening to anyway… :grinning_face:

A couple of thoughts if you do return:

The original is just under two minutes long. Yours comes in at under 1.40. That’s a big difference/increase in speed for such a short, quick song. I think you’d benefit from playing to a metronome, drum beat or the original. (I presume you are aware that YouTube has a ‘settings’ icon that you can reduce the speed to 0.75 or 0.5x speed).

Although Jerry is obviously a talented guitar player, I don’t particularly rate the lesson: He categorises it as ‘easy’, but includes barre chords (with a long jump), sus chords, and varied strumming patterns, but most of all with fast and slow strumming.

One of the most important aspects Justin stresses with guitar playing in general, and strumming in particular is keeping the rhythm of the strumming hand steady. Jerry is doubling/halving the speed of hand movement in every bar here, which is quite hard to do. However, if you simply double the rate of downstrokes (which is fast at 226, but not excessive), it greatly simplifies the strumming pattern, simply adding in a couple of upstrokes each bar :thinking:

Thanks for the stimulus to learn something new :grinning_face:

I shall assume if I ‘get flagged’ for this comment, it will not be a mistake, but no offense will be taken :rofl:

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Thanks for replying, Benji!
I’m not sure if the second time you replied was by accident or you refered to something else in my post. If you did refer to a specific part, it helps to highlight the text you reply to, wait for a second and then, select “quote”. Well, if you like to :slight_smile:

I would flag Brian anyway :grinning_face:

I think I flagged something in error once too, but if I understood it correctly then, to really have a conseqence, there will be some fields to fill in what the reason was and so, and confirm you want to flag. Maybe you’d have to click on the flag again or so and then only you get those questions why … etc…

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Hi brian, great thoughts! I had no idea I was going that much faster. I will definitely continue working on this one, and I will try to play along with Jerry’s version going forward. Yes, you are correct, this is not an easy song! Both the quick strumming and moving barre chords are a challenge, for some reason they really make me want to speed up the song. All in all a good experience, and as I plan on learning more Beatles and other songs from that era, I’m sure many other songs use similar techniques.

Hi Benji, you don’t need to be told that it’s a beatles song you’ve recorded, you can hear it. You’ve done a decent job. I think you need to develop a wristy action to get to grips with the fast strumming. Justin has a lesson on it somewhere. I also think the pattern you are doing is not quite the same as the record, which is ok if it’s what you want. I could be wrong! Anyhow, a decent job anyway!