A couple of weeks ago I had a private video lesson with a student who wanted a little help with a solo fingerstyle arrangement of the Elvis song “Can’t Help Falling in Love”. During the lesson, I immediately thought to myself “Why in the world have I not learned this before?!”. Well, this is a great song with such a beautiful melody that I just had to do a fingerstyle arrangement of it and share it with you.
The good news is that there are only a handful of chords you need to play through this song and most of the parts for the solo fingerstyle arrangement of it are pretty simple. The bad news is that there are a few tricky bits that you will probably have to slow way down and spend some time really getting under your fingers. It’s in the key of D major but I’m playing it in the key of C just because those chord shapes work very well for keeping the melody on top. If you want to play this arrangement in the original key of D all you have to do is put a capo on the second fret and then play it as it is taught in the video and the TAB.
I have two different TAB/chord sheets available for you. One is the full solo fingerstyle version in C (D Capo 2) and the other is a simple strumming version in the original key of D. The song is in 6/8 time so a simple “1 2 3 4 5 6” strumming pattern will work great if you want to strum along. You can also use a basic “thumb 1st 2nd 3rd 2nd 1st” fingerstyle rolling pattern if you want to do more of a piano accompaniment. Both options are easy to jump into because every chord gets at least one measure through the song. This is all covered in the video and the charts for you.
There are only two really tricky parts that you have to deal with but they are a great opportunity to practice more advanced things very slowly with no mistakes in order to get them down quickly. I kind of go off on a rant about practicing slowly and perfectly toward the end of the video. That’s something that I struggle with, particularly when learning new fingerstyle songs, but it is the one thing that can shave hours off of learning a new song.
If you have any questions about this song or anything else you are working through on the guitar you can always book a private 1-on-1 video lesson with me here. You can also email me with any questions you may have at nate@natesavage.com. I’d love to see a video of you playing this song so send a link once you have it down. Have a great rest of the week and stay healthy!
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Need advice on strings, picks, and other guitar gear? Here is the gear used in this video.