Elvis Presley
Can't Help Falling in Love chords
Can't Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley is a beginner song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (C, Em, Am, F, G) across 2 sections: Verse → Instrumental (repeat verse). 4 of the 5 shapes are open chords. Shapes that use a barre: F. It sits at roughly 77 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Am → F, 4 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape F
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 77BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 54 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in Can't Help Falling in Love
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar in this practice sheet. Follow the time signature shown beside each section; dots mark the remaining counts in the bar. Tap a bar to hear its chord, or loop the section to practise the changes.
Chord accompaniment only. Follow the section notes for this arrangement’s timing. Songs whose words are public domain →
Verse6/8 · ♩=77
Instrumental (repeat verse)6/8 · ♩=77
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Can't Help Falling in Love
Can’t Help Falling in Love is the waltz every guitarist should own: five open chords, a 6/8 lilt, and a descending melody that makes even a simple strum sound romantic.
The verse walks C → Em → Am → F — with each grip prepared before the next beat — then the turnaround line (“take my hand”) opens with C, G, Am before the F-C-G-C close. It’s the perfect song for practising smooth, connected chord changes because the tempo never pushes you.
Count in six, strum “bass, strum, strum” per bar, and let the top strings ring through the changes. Fingerpickers can arpeggiate the same shapes for an even closer match to the record. For a lower key that suits more voices, capo down isn’t possible — transpose to G (G, Bm, Em, C, D) instead.
How to practise Can't Help Falling in Love
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the speed marked here.
Learn the shapes easiest first
C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
4 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G6×Am → F4×F → C4×C → Em2×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Cevery section
- Emevery section
- Amevery section
- Fevery section
- Gevery section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 46 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 46 → 58 → 69 → 77 BPM. The tempo marked on this sheet is 77 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 69 for longer than feels necessary.
Practise each section's chord changes slowly, then play the sheet through at a steady tempo without pausing between sections.
Playing Can't Help Falling in Love with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capoas written
C Em Am F G
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
B Ebm Abm E F#
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 2
Bb Dm Gm Eb F
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
A C#m F#m D E
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Cm Fm C# Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G Bm Em C D
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
F# Bbm Ebm B C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F Am Dm Bb C
3 of 5 stay open
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Can't Help Falling in Love clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Sweater Weather, Payphone, The Scientist, 505.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Can't Help Falling in Love turns up across all 104 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
420bars of this chord across the songbook
70songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
155bars of this chord across the songbook
43songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
125bars of this chord across the songbook
35songs use this shape
Most often followed by F, 23×.
114bars of this chord across the songbook
29songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 38×.
509bars of this chord across the songbook
77songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 89×.