What's Up

Built around just three different open chords and a very consistent pattern, What’s Up is the perfect beginner song! And if you’re more advanced, this is still one of those songs that all guitar players should have in their repertoire.

The chord progression

To play the chord progression, we’re going to place a capo on fret 2. Then, all we need are just three different open chords, G, A minor and C.

The structure is pretty straightforward, we’re going to play each chord for two bars, starting with G, then A minor, C and back to G again.

The strumming pattern

The strumming pattern for What’s Up is very consistent, except for the very first G we’re playing!

On the first G, we’re going to play this pattern:

After this first chord, the pattern changes just a bit, as we’re adding a strum on the “and” of beat number 1 of the second bar. The good news is that you can now stick to the pattern below to play the rest of the song!

The transitions

If you’re a beginner, transitions probably are a challenge, and possibly a source of frustration. We’ve all been there! Something important about that song is actually how Linda Perry plays the transitions from one chord to the other, which is something you can apply to lots of other songs.

The idea is to use the last three strums of our pattern (the three strums before we transition to the next chord) as a transition!

Essentially, take your fretting hand off the strings, and just make sure you’re landing on the next chord on beat 1 of the next bar. That means you’ll be strumming open strings on these three strums, but you should completely embrace this idea. You’ll see that, as long as you land on the next chord when you need to, it’s going to sound great!

Without a capo?

If you don’t have a capo, don’t worry, you can still play the song! I’d definitely play this specific song with a capo, as it’s how it was recorded, but what we’ve been talking about so far is what the shapes look like, and not really the names of the chords we’re playing.

Since the capo is on fret 2, that means the chords we’re playing are actually a tone higher than what we’ve called them so far during this lesson.

So the G shape we’d be playing with the capo on fret 2 would actually be an A chord, the A minor shape is actually a B minor, and C is in reality D!

You could then use these shapes to play the same chord progression without a capo:

The intro lead

We’re in the key of A major, and the lead guitar is playing over shapes 1, 2 and 3 of A major pentatonic.

The first phrase is played on shape 3 of the A major pentatonic scale:

We then move on to shape 1 of the same scale for the next phrase:

And we finish on shape 2, with the fourth of the A major scale played on fret 7 on the G string:

In conclusion

What’s Up is a very fun song to play, and I really invite you to play along with the original song as soon as you feel ready! If you’re a bit more of an advanced player, there’s lots of fun to have with the lead, and you should definitely find a buddy to play this song with!