Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton) Guitar Lesson with TAB

Wonderful Tonight Guitar Lesson + TAB
In this guitar lesson, we do a deep dive into how to play the guitar melody, discovering how to play with more and more expression over 4 TAB examples!


Wonderful Tonight | TAB


In order to be melodic and memorable, a melody needs to hit mainly chord notes, only using other notes to create tension.

Wonderful Tonight’s guitar melody does this exceptionally well, let’s look at it in TAB.

Wonderful Tonight TAB, example 1.

Start by playing the melody like you would play Itsy Bitsy Spider. Don’t add anything for now, just focus on the intervals.

  • G – start on the 3rd, and move down to the root via the 2nd (tension).
  • D/F# – start on the 5th, the 6th and 4th are tension notes.
  • C – start on the 3rd, jump to 7, down to 5th via 6th (tension).
  • D – start on the 5th, the rest are tension, b7 is a chord note but it’s still tension.
  • G – start on the 5th.

All chord notes are release notes. The 3rd is the money note. Notice how every bar starts on a release note: 3rd – 5th – 3rd – 5th – 5th.

Next, let’s develop this melody to become better guitar players. First, we slide or hammer on into suitable notes, which look like this using TAB:

Wonderful Tonight TAB, example 2.

Experiment with sliding to all instead of hammering on as well. When you feel confident, let’s try bending instead.

Wonderful Tonight TAB, example 3.

Ensure all bends are perfectly in tune. Finally, let’s combine all the concepts.

Wonderful Tonight TAB, example 4.

In the final example, I combined all concepts and also added vibrato.

On a final note, consider this. Whenever you vibrato without first bending up to the note, you are not actually playing a real vibrato.

This is because you don’t go below the note, a vibrato needs to be below and above the note. If you vibrato without first bending, you are only doing it above the note, not below.

Using a real musical example as we did here with Wonderful Tonight is a much better idea than any bending, vibrato, hammer-on, or sliding exercise as they by nature all are unmusical and mechanical.

Using a real song like this ensures you stay musical. Should you want to get better at understanding the fretboard, play what you saw above in the remaining four CAGED shapes.

Should some of the shapes turn out to be too low on the neck in order for you to bend, change the key!



Wonderful Tonight TAB | Related Pages


Wonderful Tonight | Chords + Lyrics

Wonderful Tonight chords lesson.

You can learn to play Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recording.

G | D/F# | C | D |
It’s late in the evening, she’s wondering what clothes to wear…


Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics

When you can play the TAB for Wonderful Tonight, try these five tunes from the songbook.


Eric Clapton tunes

Eric Clapton wrote Wonderful Tonight.

As well as a member of bands like Derek & The Dominos, The Yardbirds, and Cream, Eric Clapton has successfully played sessions for more stars than any other guitar player.

His long career earned him three inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.


Eric Clapton on the web

Listen to Eric Clapton on Spotify.


About me | Dan Lundholm

Dan Lundholm wrote this guitar lesson and TAB for Wonderful Tonight.

This guitar lesson by Dan Lundholm features TAB and covers Wonderful Tonight. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.

Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.


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