Can't Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley Tutorial/Lesson
Can't Help Falling in Love
C, G, Am, Em, F, B7, A7, Dm
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Video transcript
hey everyone my name is Ellen and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to play Can't Help Falling in Love With You by Elvis Presley on the guitar so stay tuned if this is something that you want to learn so this song is not going to be too hard if you're a beginner I'm going to go through and show you guys one strumming pattern and one picking pattern that you can use with this song the chords are pretty simple most of them are open but there is one bar chord which is f but I will also teach you guys an alternate fingering for that if you can't play bar chords and then the only thing left to mention is that if you want to sing this in the original key that Elvis Presley sings it in you will want to put a capo on your second fret however I like to sing this a little bit lower than he did so I'm going to sing this without a capo and I think that it sounds perfectly fine without a capo so let's go ahead and get started by learning all the cords you need to know Falling in Love all right so let's go ahead and take a closer look at those chords you need to know to play this song the first one is C which looks like this and sounds like this next we'll learn G which looks like this and sounds like this after that we have a minor which looks like this and sounds like this next we have E minor which looks like this and sounds like this now we have F which is our only bar chord and it looks like this and sounds like this and I still sometimes have trouble with bar chords and buzzing so if you're like me and you have a little bit of trouble with bar chords you can actually play the alternate version of f which looks like this and sounds like this and just remember the x is mean not to play that string so so for this alternate version you would not be playing this top E string or this bottom E string all right now let's move into some of those chords that are a little bit more abstract you might not have seen before which is B7 and that looks like this and sounds like this fun fact that's actually my favorite chord I don't know why I just really like the way it sounds and and then of course we' have our A7 chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right and then last of all we have our D minor chord which looks like this and sounds like this all right and those are all the chords you need to know to play this song all right so once you have all those chords memorized and you can transition between them pretty easily let's go ahead and move on to a strumming pattern that you can use with this song Take My Hand now before we jump into the strumming pattern the piece of advice that I always have if you're a beginner to guitar is to go through the entire song and just play each chord once with a downstroke that way you know where all of the chord changes are going to be throughout the song so I'll go ahead and give you an example if you start with your c chord on that's the first chord in the song and you're just going to strum it down once move on to the next chord which is E minor then a minor then we have f c g and I would go ahead and just go through the rest of the song just playing those chords once on a downstroke that way you know that you can transition between them and then go ahead and add in your singing so that you know which word you're going to be switching your chords on so an example would be like this we've got c as our first chord wise men say only fools rush but I can't help falling in love with you simple right so go ahead and go through the rest of the song sing it through once with those chord changes that way you know where to expect them and then once you get used to that we'll go ahead and jump into our strumming pattern so this strumming pattern is pretty simple and you can play it through the entire song here it is it's just down down up down up so let me go ahead and play this for you in Rhythm so you can hear it it I've got my C chord on I have down down up down up down down up down up so let's go ahead and play through that pattern together if you put your c chord on cuz that's the first chord we're going to start the song with we're just going to strum it down down up down up if you want to use a pick that would be easier I just like to strum with my thumb sometimes so we're just going to try one more time we've got down down up down down up down up all right and then once you get that Rhythm we can go ahead and add in our chord transitions so now we're going to start with our C we're going to play this pattern through once down down up then we're going to switch to our next chord E minor down down up down up switch to a minor down down up down up and this time we're going to play it twice down down up down up then we've got F down down up down up C down down up down up G down down up down up down up so you can see at the end of some of those phrases we're going to be holding this pattern out twice as long um it's pretty intuitive once you play through through it you'll figure out which ones to hold longer and I will also play through this song at the end so that you can hear it as well but let's go ahead and string all of those chord changes in together so that we don't have to stop between chords and uh let's get the Rhythm down so go ahead and put your c chord on and we're going to go through the entire first phrase we have C down up down up E minor a minor twice F down up down up C G twice f g a minor f 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 tce and then once you can play through that first phrase you pretty much can play through the entire song because this strumming pattern is applicable for the whole song but let's go ahead and go through that kind of bridge middle part that he sings like a river flows and so you'll see here the strumming pattern is exactly the same we're going to apply it except the chords will be different so now we have E minor down up down up B7 E minor B7 E minor B7 E minor a A7 D minor G and from there you would just go back into the chorus and it's all the same and you can use this strumming pattern for the entire song and it'll sound really great so let's go ahead and go through an example of what it sounds like with some singing so I'm going to play for you the second verse into the bridge section with those Miner chords just so you can hear what the entire song would sound like so with your c chord on we're going to go ahead and play through this shall I stay would it be a sin if I can help falling in love with you like a river flows surely to the Sea darling so it goes some things are meant to be and then if you can do those two phrases then you can do the entire song because the song is a little bit repetitive and just a little fun fact this is actually the same strumming pattern that 21 pilot is used for their cover of this song because I know a lot of you were requesting this song because of that cover so there you go that's how you do the strumming pattern but now let's go ahead and get a little bit more into it and I'm going to show you a beautiful picking pattern that you can use that sounds just like the original with this song Take My All right so I've zoomed in quite a bit so that we can learn this picking pattern so go ahead if you put your c chord on since that's the first chord in the song what we're going to do is we're going to play kind of like arpeggios with each chord so with our c chord what we're going to do is with our thumb we're going to play the lowest string in that chord which for C would be the fifth string or the a string so go ahead and pick that with your thumb and then what I want you to do is with these three fingers you're going to put them on the top three strings g b and e and then go ahead and pick those so how we're going to play this picking pattern is we're going to start with our lowest string go up to the top string and then back down the guitar so let me show you an example we've got so if we put that in our number form we've got 5 3 2 1 2 3 5 3 2 1 2 3 and so that same pattern is going to apply for each chord so we've done our c chord let's go ahead and go into our E minor chord so with our E minor chord our lowest note is actually going to be our bottom E string but again these three fingers will still be on the top three and those will play the same so we've got now 6 3 2 1 2 3 so we've got C E minor and if you can play that then you can do the rest of this picking pattern so I'm going to go ahead and take a minute to show you guys the rest of your chords that we'll be playing so for a minor our lowest string is going to be our fifth string so that'll sound like this 5 3 2 1 1 2 3 then we have our F chord our lowest string and that is going to be our sixth string so we have 6 3 2 1 2 3 now let's talk about G again lowest is going to be our sixth string so we've got 6 3 2 1 2 3 we're almost done now let's go ahead and go to our B7 chord cuz we're going to jump into that kind of middle part of the song and with our B7 chord our lowest string is our fifth string but again these three will still be the same so we've got 5 3 2 1 2 3 then we have A7 again it's going to be the same we have 5 3 2 1 2 3 and then the last chord in this song that you need to know is D Minor so that is actually a little bit different our lowest string in the D minor chord is going to be actually our fourth string so now with our thumb we have four but then these three fingers are still the same 3 2 1 2 3 so you can see this pattern is pretty easy to get you just have to remember which string to pick with your thumb that's actually the only string that's ever going to change everything else is going to be the same so to recap our G chord F chord chord and E minor chord are all going to be played with the 6 3 2 1 pattern our c chord A minor chord B7 chord and A7 chords those are all going to be played with the 5321 pattern and then our D minor chord is going to be played with our 4 321 pattern the only other one I want to mention is if you can't play bar chords and you are choosing to do the alternate version of f then your picking pattern is going to be a little different so what you're going to want to do is take your thumb put that on the fifth string and then for these three fingers you're going to want to play the middle string so you're playing 5 4 3 2 this is only applicable if you're playing the alternate version of f but it would be 5 4 3 2 3 4 okay so once you memorize which strings to pick for every chord it becomes pretty simple the actual pattern you just want to string them together so now go ahead and string them together without stopping we've got C E minor a minor twice f c g twice all right and that should give you a feeling of how this picking pattern will sound so now let me go ahead and play you an example of what this sounds like in the song itself again I'm going to start with the second verse and go into that kind of bridge portion that way you can hear a little bit of how the entire song would sound so feel free to play along with me so you can get the hang of this as well sh stay would it be of sin if I can't help falling in love with you like a river flows surely to the Sea darling And So It Goes some are meant to be and again since this song is quite repetitive you can apply this picking pattern for the entire song and it would sound really great and I actually think that it's pretty accurate sounding to Elvis Presley's original version so go ahead and practice this picking pattern as slowly as you need to until you can speed it up and string it together and then once you can do that you can play through the entire song All right so once you have those chords Down you've got that strumming pattern down and you've learned that pigging pattern let's go ahead and put those elements together and we can play the entire song I'm going to be playing it through with the picking pattern just because that's the version that I prefer more but feel free to strum along with me if that's the way that you want to play but um yeah let's go ahead and put everything together and play through Can't Help Falling in Love With You by Elvis Presley good luck love with you what men say ho fools rushing but I I Can't Help Falling in Love With You shall I stay would it be a if I can in Hell falling in love with you like a river flows Surly to the Sea darling so it goes something are meant to be take my hand take my whole life too for I Can Help Falling in Love With You Like a River flows surely to the Sea darling so it go some things are meant to be take my hand take my whole life too for I can't help falling in love with you for I Can't Help Falling in Love With You all right thank you guys so much for watching my tutorial I hope that I was able to help you even if it was just a little bit if you are still in the mood to play some more guitar please feel free to check out some of my playlists my detailed tutorials are ones that are maybe a little bit more complicated they have picking patterns and bar chords and things that are a little bit more advanced um or you can click on my basic tutorials which are more just easy songs with very simple chords and simple strumming patterns and things like that and then my TMT tutorials are just kind of like tips and tricks that I have for you on skill learning and ways to get better at guitar and to take care of your guitar and things like that so go ahead and check out any of those playlists if you would like to as well as follow me on any of my social media sites this is where I keep in contact with all of my subscribers I'd like to ask you guys' opinions a lot so if you are interested in participating in any polls that I have going on or just any song requests or anything like that please feel free to leave those requests and those questions on my social media sites and I will get back to you as soon as I can um besides that I hope that you had fun with this song it's a classic it's one of my dad's favorites and therefore it's one of my favorites so I hope that you guys enjoyed learning with me in this song and I will see you in my next video bye falling in love with you