This Years Love by David Gray Lesson

Learn to play This Years Love by David Gray on JustinGuitar!


View the full lesson at This Years Love by David Gray | JustinGuitar

I absolutely hate learning this song, the very rapid strum movement gives me a lot of trouble :slight_smile:

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Probably one of the harder grade 1 consolidation songs because of the quicker changes and strumming pattern but it’s exactly why I chose it. I’ll brush up on it while moving onto Grade 2. I found that using the middle finger as an anchor between A and C helps immensely. The chord changes exercise helps to speed it up.

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Hi all,

Can anyone tell me the tempo to this song?

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The app says 109

R.

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When I set it in the Justin Time trainer I set it at 87 bpm’s, which I’m sure I’ll have found on the Interweb.

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In the video he plays this with a capo on the first fret, but in the app it doesn’t tell you to do that… am I missing something? Sounds terrible and clashes with the app without it, but I can’t find any indication in the app that I’m meant to do it.

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Chris, the capo is on the first fret if you want to play along with the original recording.

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Yeah but what I was wondering was more, how was I meant to know this from the app? Am I missing a section - or does the app simply expect you to play without the capo because the chord practice is still (pretty much) the same ? That would be fine except this sounds really terrible when you play it over the top of the app’s output which is in the right key.

I’d think it would be fairly easy to include capo information on the song on the app, even if it was just a footnote of the About tab.

Ahhhh okay, sorry Chris I misunderstood. I cannot help on the app side of things as I don’t have it. Hopefully someone will come along that will be able to answer your question.

Hello, I don’t understand what is the rythm . Can somebdoy explain this for me?

It feels that Cadd9 would be great for this song instead of C chord. Works well sound wise and also in fingering.
Great Song!
Thanks Justin!

Hello Teodora and welcome to our community. :slight_smile:

The song is in 6/8 time for the rhythm. Hopefully this should help you.

Hi,

I have learned the 6:8 pattern mentioned in the video (the only strumming pattern…)

However, Justin is playing a more complex pattern in the Full Cover portion of the song lesson video. I cannot figure that pattern out. I have tried combinations by adding a down on 2 or adding an up after 1, but I just do not sound the same.

Please help me understand what Justin is doing

I had a quick look. I’m hearing the first 2 bars like this:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 
D     U D   D   D   D   D           D     U D U

See if that sounds right to you. I’m sure there are some variations throughout the song, but this could be a starting point.

I think which beats get accented is important, I will let you figure that out :slight_smile:

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Thanks for hearing it for me!

I figured out this part, he uses this in the intro and chorus especially when there is no lyrics over the C chord. This pattern is not used on any other chords.

Its the verse pattern that i cannot figure out.

Ohhh this one is a bit of a rascal! :grinning:
It has REALLY highlighted some funky things going on with my “strumming”…
So first thing I’ve learned is that If I have to put an emphasis on a down stroke then the up before goes too fast and so is out of time and rhythm then the emphasised Down stroke is too large a movement without a rhythmic upstroke following it…
In Japanese martial arts, when you punch with emphasis you may use a Kiai (big shout which translates as Expression Of Spirit). As you do a punch, the opposite arm, the non punching hand is pulled back hard and fast with a snap to the hip. This is called Hiki-te - Withdrawing Hand.

So those 30+ years of Japanese Martial arts have come in right handy for learning the guitar, tells me what I’m doing wrong and the Japanese terminology for it! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I never did have any sort of sense of rhythm so… back to the drawing board…

I’ve actually found I can do this strumming pattern when I relax in to it and don’t think about it but as soon as I think about it, what is next, where the emphasis go, chord change coming up etc, it all goes horribly wrong!
Still, I’m not being paid for it and its fun to learn so lets keep on keeping on…

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song recommended for fingerstyle but no demo guess will have to work it out its in 6/8 but how do you play half a bar?

There’s something about this song in the App that throws off my rhythm midway through. I can’t tell if it’s just my imagination, but it seems like the tempo slows down at certain points and then speeds back up. Does anyone else experience this?

Also the App says 109 bpm but it feels a lot faster than that. It’s pretty difficult to play at full speed with the 6/8 strumming, atleast at Stage 1. Any tips would be nice from someone who’s tried to play this song in Stage 1! :smile:

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Well, you’ll be glad to know that if you are going insane then we are both going insane. Sometimes I get in a good rythm then everyhing suddenly falls apart. It feels like it’s the tempo of the song that’s changing, but maybe that’s just me finding excuses :thinking:

I don’t really understand how BPM is calculated when it comes to weird time signatures. I thought it was as simple as counting the number of eighth notes per minute when it came to 6/8 time (so six beats per bar), but apparently in 6/8 there are only two beats per bar (two triplets).

Regardless, testing with a manual BPM tester, I got around 165 BPM when counting all 6 “beats”, or downstrums in a bar. Using the proper two beats per bar (only the big circles in the app) i got around 54 BPM (half of 109), which seems to suggest the app simply treats each bar as having four beats regardless of the time signature.

Most websites state the BPM of the song is 165. But this contradicts what most sites say about 6/8 having two beats per bar instead of six. Would be nice if someone who knew about this stuff would chime in, cause it’s confusing as hell ahah.