Eric Clapton Tears In Heaven

TG takes a look at Rockschool’s arrangement of Eric Clapton’s much-loved fingerstyle classic

Eric Clapton’s blues legacy is well known, but the nylon string fingerstyle lines in Tears In Heaven showcase another side of his musicianship. The guitar part in this song is so well arranged by Eric that it works either with its original backing music or played as an unaccompanied solo arrangement.

The harmony in Tears In Heaven is quite complex, peppered with chord ‘inversions’ where the lowest note isn’t the root note – A7/E, for example, is an A7 chord with an E note in the bass, and it hints at Eric’s gospel influences.

The chorus features a change from A major to F# minor and a neat chromatic bass run from F# to F and E, eventually landing on an F#7 chord which includes a note from outside of the key signature – A#. It is to Clapton’s credit that his accompaniment sounds so smooth in this section, easily making sense of the unusual harmony.