Hey, how’s it going this is Jon McLennan with Guitar Control, today’s lesson is a song called “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with you”. I’m going to take you through the entire song and break down how to play rhythm guitar and chords through the whole thing.
Let’s get into it “I can’t help falling in love with you”, this is a beautiful song it’s sort of a arpeggiated pattern that we’re doing through the chords here and I just played the Intro and the A section the intro starts out on a D chord and I’m thinking six beats in a measure here so I’m going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, so if you look at the chart is six beats in each measure and I’ve got a D chord for that first measure of the intro then an a7 and then a D, and the D last two bars and then we start the melody when Elvis comes in singing so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, switch to A7 and D.
Let’s go over those four bars there I did a deep to an F sharp minor 7 just like an F sharp minor barre word but I just take the pinky off to get the 7th and then B minor 7 and then B minor 7 over A’s for that Chord I let my first finger so I can’t say and then bring this down then G, D over F sharp, A7 over E and A7, so this is kind of a cool approach where basically with my picking hand I’m going to play the root, always on the 1st beat 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and then what I do is I pick a steady string of 8th notes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, and they could be on any string in the chord I want to try and keep some kind of flow to it so usually it’ll be like the next string down, sometimes I’ll skip around a little bit.
But the rule is you always want that root on the first beat so F sharp, B minor, G, D over F sharp, A7 over E. Now typically if I played A7 I wouldn’t play the low E note like I wouldn’t strum like that but when you arpeggiate it get away with playing those kind of slash chords with that low bass note being E and now I bring my thumb over and when I did I slightly touch that string so I got A7 over E which one I put the 5th string in the root then the next 8 bars goes B minor 7, G, D with an A in the base A and then that repeats so play the whole thing from the from the verse.
I must say the cords this time D F sharp minor 7, B minor 7, B minor 7 over A, G, C over F sharp, A7 over A, B minor 7, G, D over A, A and D and that’s the first section of the tune.
Let’s move on to the next part the bridge it starts with the melody and the chords sound like this. I started out on an F sharp minor 7 same cord we used in the verse and I’m going to go 1 measure their 1/2 all the cords by the way in the bridge this B section lasts 6 beats because we’re in 6/8 so I’m going to count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, switch to the last one measure basically so C sharp 7, F sharp minor 7, at the C sharp 7, is like a C chord but I’ve added my pinky to the 4th fret so I’ve got 4 and I’m just playing the inner string so I’m not playing the 1st string or the 6th string muted it’s a great chord so we’re going to do an F sharp minor 7 to C sharp 7 three times so here’s 1 and 2 and 3 after that third time we go back to F sharp minor 7 and we’re going to a B9 cord which is kind of jazzy sounding chord again all the notes are on those inner string strings 5, 2, 2, and I’ve got 2, 1, and some people will barre it with a third finger sometimes I will put one finger on each note either it looks like a B7 but it just brings that pinky up play the 9th there which gives you a little bit more of a jazzy sound then you go to E minor 7 which is open 2nd fret, 2nd fret open 3rd one finger then A7 so the last four of ours are like and I might do something like this and play a little walking bass line to 4 on the 5th string and then back to our D chord and now we’re at the 1st section see how that connects there so let’s go from the B section and we’ll play to that D chord of the 1st part again here we go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, F sharp, C sharp 7, F sharp minor 7, C sharp 7,F sharp minor 7, C sharp 7, F sharp minor 7, B9, E minor 7, A7.
Now you don’t have to keep the picking going non-stop like one you can also strum a little bit like one it’s sort of my approach might be a little bit of a hybrid on this. So the last part I’m going to teach you is when you get to the end you go – it’s called a tag you repeat that chord progression.
I hope this video inspires you and makes you want to pick up the guitar and just keep playing keep playing for more information check out guitar control.com there’s a lot of great courses available there and also don’t forget to leave a comment below and let us know what you’d like to see in upcoming videos. Make sure to subscribe on our YouTube Channel thanks for watching.
