Ed Sheeran's 4 Chord Shortcut That Unlocks Every Song (Steal This)

0:00 There are four chords on guitar that beginners are using right now to play basically every song in their playlist. And if you think I'm exaggerating, here's Ed Sheeran to tell you. >> This is really simple. I only ever use four chords. So, uh, if you know any of my songs, once you learn these chords, you'll be able to play all of them. >> You name any song and I'll play it in the four chords. >> Um, >> so these these are the chords. >> Passenger. Um, that's your friend. Um, >> cuz you only need the light when it's burning [music] low. Only miss the song [singing] when it starts to snow. Only know you love her when you let her go. >> I'm walking away. Craig David. >> Uh, let it be Beatles. When I find myself [music and singing] in times of trouble, I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Any song. >> Yeah. So, it's four chords. That's it. And by the end of this video, you're

0:47 going to know exactly what those four chords are, how to use them, and make them sound good. And I'm also going to give you a full song list so you can start implementing those chords into real songs that you love. [music] No scales, no theory, just real songs. Now, if you're anything like most beginners I talk to, you've sat down, you've tried playing the guitar, maybe you've looked up a song on YouTube and you've seen like some chords that look like a foreign language, right? And then you just put the guitar down and that's it. Maybe you figured guitar just wasn't for you or your fingers just [music] don't work properly. Maybe you thought that you needed years of lessons before any of it would actually click. That's not a talent problem. That is an information problem. And no one showed you the shortcuts. My name is Michael Rice and I've been performing full-time for the last 2 years. And I run the largest guitar community on school where I've helped thousands of beginners learn

1:35 faster than 90% of people who pick up the guitar. And the one thing they all have in common is they stopped over complicating it. Right? No music theory, no years of lessons, just the right chords in the right order. So here's the real problem. Most beginner guitar content teaches you like you're training to be a musician with, you know, scales and notes and theory that you're never going to actually use. And by the time that you're done learning all that, you've lost the spark that made you want to play in the first place. So here's what we're going to do instead. I'm going to give you the four chords. And in a second, I'm going to show you something about those chords that's going to blow your mind. Plus, I'm going to give you a 5minute drill to make them actually sound good and like real music. Oh, and I'm also going to give you a full list of songs that [music] you can test them on today. But first, let me show you something about these chords that no one's talking about. So, what if

2:21 the most common chords in music were also the easiest ones to play? Like, what if theoretically you only had to move two fingers [music] to play those chords and that was enough to go from one chord to the next? Well, that's exactly what these four special chords are. And we're talking about like iconic songs [music] like Wagon Wheel, Browneyed Girl, Good Riddens, Time of Your Life, Country Roads, like thousands of songs, not just country, but they all use the same four chords. And here's why that works. In music, the same chords get recycled over and over and over across thousands of different songs. And don't take my word for it. [music] Take Eds. So, what are these magical chords? All right, let's jump in. So, all of these chords use what's called anchored fingers. Now, the beauty of anchored fingers is it allows you to make these transitions extremely efficient because what we're going to do for these four

3:07 chords is actually anchor our ring finger and our pinky finger on the first and second strings on the low E string. [music] and the B string. And we're going to keep those fingers there for the entire four chord sequence. We're going to start by making a G chord like this. Now, that's putting our middle finger on the sixth string, third fret, and putting our pointer finger here on the second fret, fifth string. The next chord is a C chord variation, which is actually called the C add9. Now, all we need to do to get from the G to the C is move those two fingers down one string each. Super easy. So, so far we've got G and C add9. [music] The next chord is an E minor or technically an E minor 7. All we're going to do is move those two fingers around. So, from [music] this

3:52 angle, we're going to go to and it's kind of like you're stacking your fingers. 1 2 3 kind of like a staircase. So, there's your E minor 7. You're going to strum all six strings. For the G chord, you're going to strum [music] all six strings. For the C chord, you're going to strum the bottom five strings. And for [music] the E minor, you're going to strum all six strings again. Now, the last chord is a Dsus4. So, usually a D chord looks like [music] this. And it's it's a little tricky to incorporate into your playing. So, we're just going to keep those two fingers anchored. So, coming from that E minor chord, all we're going to do is bring this finger down one string. Or you could also use this finger if that feels more comfortable. So, if we go through all those chords, the movements are G, C, E minor, and D. Like, that's

4:37 so easy. And we're barely even moving our fingers. So, those chord transitions become super efficient and super easy. So, those are the four chords. There's your unlock. You have the G, the C, the E minor, and the D. So, there they are. Those are the four chords that Ed Sheeran uses and [music] famously says get used in almost every song. So, in a second, we're going to jump into a drill. But if you're feeling a little bit lost already, I cover specifically how to use these chords in detail in my free 7-day challenge inside No Theory Club. Breaks everything down for you. Super simple. It's the first link in the description. Totally free. Go check it out. Okay. So, now you have the chords, but knowing the chords and being [music] able to play them and make it sound like a real song are two very different things. So, how do we bridge that gap? I'm going to give you my best fiveinute

5:26 exercise that I teach inside the club to turn these chord shapes into something that actually sounds musical. Okay, so all you need for this exercise is your guitar and [music] a metronome. I like to use one right off Google because it's free and it's super easy to use. So, all we're going to do is take those four chords that we just learned being the G, C add9, E minor [music] 7, and the Dsus4. So, what we're going to do is we're going to choose two chords out of those four chords to start. So, I'm going to use G and the C add9 chord. Next, I'm going to set my metronome over to 60 BPM. Now, you can start slower, you can start faster, but I'm just using this as a starting point. And once that's going, I'm going to play those two chords back and forth with a click in between. So, we have G click, C click, G, [music] click, C click, and

6:16 then just go back and forth. Doing this gives you plenty of time to make that chord transition and really try to build that muscle memory into your playing. From there, we're just going to add in that E minor and that D chord slowly. So, instead of switching between two chords, we're switching between all three or all four chords. So now we can do G click, C click, E minor click, D click, or you could switch the order and do like C click, E minor [music] click, G click, D click. Again, these chords are not going to show up in the same order in all songs. It's going to be different. It's going to be mixed and matched. So the more that you can be adaptable and be able to go from chord to chord in any combination is going to help a bunch. Now, once you can switch

7:02 between those chords, the next layer is to add strumming. Now, I would start this with just one simple chord, like starting with a G chord, for example. But what we're going to do is start to add some layers of strumming up and down into the equation. So, if we start that metronome at 60 BPM, the first step would just be downstrums on those clicks. So, we have down, down, [music] down, down, right? Simple downrums. Next would be to add upstrums. [music] So we have down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Right? Just building that tempo. And then we have [music] down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. And then you could start to switch those chords. We [music] have G, C, C, C, E minor, E minor, D, D. And now those simple chords are really

7:53 starting to sound like music. Pretty cool, right? So, the next question that I always get is, okay, I've got the chords, I've got the drill, but like what songs do I actually practice? And there are two ways to really find out. The first way is just to use Google and like search up, okay, what songs use G, C, and D. Now, you can use tools like Ultimate Guitar or a bunch of other chord websites to find this out. But, it's kind of like a trial and error sort of scenario. The second way is to use the resources that I've already built and grab my master song [music] list. go ahead and follow me on Instagram and DM me list and I'll shoot the entire song list over to you and then you can finally start putting all the pieces together. But if you're really serious about learning guitar, not just knowing a few chords, but building the kind of confidence where you can just sit down and [music] play, then come join No Theory Club. You'll get my full 7-day challenge for free, as well as a full

8:40 fasttrack song path where you [music] can learn everything in the right order with a full community of people on the same journey. No overwhelm, no theory, just real progress. It's the first link in the description. So now you have the four chords, a drill to make them sound good, and a full path to playing real songs. That's more than most people get in their first month of lessons, and you got it [music] in one video. So if this helped, like and subscribe. I'm going to be dropping videos like this every week to help you guys as much as possible. So, you definitely don't want to miss the next