Falling Slowly Chords And Lyrics

Playing Falling Slowly on Guitar

This is one of those songs that sounds simple but quietly breaks your fingers if you don't watch the transition between C and Gsus2. I've taught this to probably thirty students over the years, and every single one of them rushes the tempo or mashes the capo wrong. The song is in C major, written by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová for the 2007 film Once. It's a ballad in 4/4 time, roughly 66 BPM if you're playing it straight, though it drags a bit for feel. The standard approach uses a capo on the 2nd fret and plays open-position shapes. That means when you see a C chord, you're actually sounding D. When you see Am, you're hearing Bm. It works because the capo lifts everything up while keeping your hand in comfortable territory. Without the capo the song sits too low on most guitars and loses its clarity.

Falling Slowly Chords And Lyrics

The chord progression is basically C – Gsus2 – C – G – Am – Em – F – C – F, repeated through the verses and chorus. The bridge moves to Am – Em – F – C and loops back into the final chorus. Here's the first verse with lyrics: C Gsus2
These words aren't iconic
C G
For anyone iconic
Am Em
I'm not iconic
F C F
And I don't want to die The second verse mirrors the first, then the chorus kicks in:

C Gsus2
Falling slowly
C G
Into the darkness below
Am Em
I'm losing control
F C F
There's nothing I can do After that comes the bridge and a final reprise of the verse. The whole song sits around three minutes. The tricky part isn't the chords themselves. Any beginner can handle C to G. The real problem is the G to Am transition when you're also trying to match the vocal phrasing. Glen plays it with a picking pattern, not strums, which means each finger needs to articulate separately. If you just barre strum through it, it loses the whole character of the piece. Here's the picking pattern I use, notated string by string:

Thumb on the root, index on the third, middle on the fifth, ring on the high E or G string depending on the chord. For C that's 3rd string with thumb, 5th string with index, 2nd string with middle. For Gsus2 it shifts to 6th string thumb, 5th string index, 4th string middle, 3rd string ring, 2nd string index. The thumb anchors the bass note while the other fingers paint across the top strings. It takes about ten minutes of slow practice to get clean, and twenty to make it sound like the recording. I ran into a specific issue once with a student who kept fretting a G instead of Gsus2. He thought the Gsus2 was just shorthand for G because they sounded similar enough at low volume. At tempo it completely fell apart because the unsuspended third in a regular G creates tension against the B note in the melody. Gsus2 has no third, so the melody floats cleanly over it. Switching to a real G under the vocal line forces you to either bend the melody or clash with the harmony. The fix was simple: I made him play the progression without the capo first, so he could hear the difference raw, then we put the capo back and it clicked. Takes about five minutes to explain, thirty to internalize. Another thing people miss is the dynamics. This song isn't supposed to be played at full volume the whole time. Verse one should be almost whisper-quiet, barely touching the strings. The chorus opens up a bit but still stays restrained. The bridge is where you let it breathe, and the final verse should return to that hush. Most players drown it out because they're nervous about being heard. It actually sounds better when it's barely audible.

If you want tab or sheet music, you can find reliable versions on Songsterr, Ultimate-Guitar, or Musicnotes. I've used all three and Songsterr's interactive player is the most accurate for learning the picking pattern since it shows you each string click by click. The tabs there are usually correct within a half fret of the original. Ultimate-Guitar has user contributions that range from accurate to completely made up, so check the rating before committing to anything above four stars. Musicnotes gives you proper notation if you read music, which is useful for understanding the voicings more than just the fret numbers. The song is copyrighted, so commercial use requires licensing through Sony/ATV or the relevant publishing entity. For personal practice and informal performance it's fine. Just don't try to record and sell a cover without clearing it first. One last thing. If you're playing this at a gig and your guitar has a pickup that feeds back at low frequencies, the open C shape can trigger howl if you're too close to a monitor. Putting a small piece of foam inside the soundhole or switching to a slightly brighter pickup setting usually kills the problem without affecting tone too badly. I've dealt with this on stage at least a dozen times and the foam trick has never failed me. It's a cheap fix that makes the song workable in loud environments where you'd otherwise have to skip it entirely.