That’s when the melody comes and then c, g, d over f sharp, e minor, c, d, back to your intro. After that intro lead we head into the verse, the next part where Clapton comes in singing, the melody.īasically those first eight bars you’re going to repeat are the chords of the intro so c, d, g, d over f sharp, c, d and then you’re going to tag it with these next couple bars c. For me it’s coming out of BB’s King School, the way he would play like, over a g blues applied it’s kind of blues flavor but applied over a pop song. The second half of the phrase goes climbing up, let’s try it all together here, we go halfway and climb one more time, that’s the intro lead.

What happened is you’d go to the 10 then slide to 12, slide the 13, move your first finger down to the first string, hammer from 10 to 12, and then back to 10. That’s the first half of Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton and then the second half, goes same variation on the end.

Let’s put them together and then you do the first one again and let it ring, so let’s try it just following the chords.

It’s a nice little kind of BB Kingish Bluesy lick, and then you do it again, but instead of going up to ten you go to nine on the third string. Let me break that down for you, I’ve gone to the eighth fret or tenth fret on the second string, I’m using my third finger and going to start by bending that note, then goes up and goes down, then you go to the eighth fret and then back up to ten. If I was playing by myself I’d probably just play what I’m showing you right now, the full chords and then arpeggiate, by picking eighth notes one, and two, and three, and then play this lead on top. One thing, that you might hear on the recording of Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton is arpeggiating, it’s something basically taking those chords and playing different inversions of them, and then picking individual notes. What I’m going to do is to have a little looper pedal, I’m going to play that first part for you, and I’ll show you how they work together. We’re going to count one, two, three, four, two, three, four, two, three, four, back so that’s the Intro chord wise, and then there’s a lead that goes on top of that. Wonderful Tonight Introįor the Intro to Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton, I’m going between three chords a g, a, and d over f sharp, d which my thumb is put on the second fret sixth string, and then I have the c chord back to a d over f, so there’s four beats on each chord. Hey, how’s it going this is Jon McLennan with Guitar Control, I hope you’re doing fantastic in todays video lesson will be learning on a song called “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton.Ĭheck the image above to follow the chords and tabs for How to Play “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton.

Wonderful tonight tabs and chords