Tears In Heaven Chords

Learn how to play Tears In Heaven!

Tears In Heaven is a single from the album Rush by Eric Clapton.

However, most people recognize the live version from the Unplugged Album.

Tears In Heaven chords form a genius progression that use small variations and slash chords to keep the harmonic interest on top.

Start your lesson by watching the video and try playing along with it. You will soon find how massive this tune is.

One of the genius harmonic tricks Tears In Heaven use is the key change from A major to G major.

Tears in Heaven Key Change

The verse is in the key of A Ionian, the M8 section modulates to C Lydian (C is the parallel major of an Am chord).

This key change makes us feel as if there is hope considering: “…time can bring you down…”.

This concept repeats itself when we move back to A major.

A double jeopardy key change!

Eric Clapton Licks

Clapton’s main strength as a player are all those little tasteful embellishments he constantly add throughout Tears In Heaven’s chord progression.

What he does is adding notes from the modes around the shapes.

In the last lick of the song for example; can you see how Clapton follow the A major scale, but still heavily relies on the pentatonic?

My version should be a close replica to what Clapton might play if he performed it on his own, remember, the unplugged version is a two guitar arrangement.

To get you into Tears In Heaven’s harmonic structure; use Chordacus, link this with the SWS and see how the chords relate to each other as numbers on the fretboard.

To learn from the chords of Tears In Heaven, check your copy of the Guitar Conspiracy (a part of The Spy Tunes Method).

The answers are in the numbers!