Try A Little Tenderness Chords Michael Buble

The chord structure behind Bublé's smooth take on Try A Little Tenderness

Most people looking up the chords for this song are trying to replicate the Bublé version from his live performances, which is tricky because he shifts keys depending on the venue and his vocal range for the night. The original composition by Campbell, Connelly, and Ramey sits in G major traditionally, but Bublé tends to bring it down significantly. I've played this one enough times at house gigs to know that the most common key he uses is D major for the main body, with some strategic modulation on the bridge section. The verse opens with a straightforward D - G - D progression that establishes the lazy, swinging feel. From there you move into Bm7 - G - A, then D - A7 to set up the turnaround. The chorus section shifts to G - D - Em7 - A7, and then resolves back through Bm7 - Em7 - A7 - D. The bridge ("Don't you know?") goes to the relative minor feel with Bm - E7 - Am7 - D7 before looping back into the final chorus, where Bublé usually adds an extra half-step shift to keep it fresh. Here is the thing most guitar players get wrong about this arrangement. They play it too straight. The song demands a relaxed bossa nova or waltz-like feel, not a rigid 4/4 strum. When I first tried learning this for a wedding gig, I spent two weeks sounding stiff and generic until I started using a fingerpicked pattern in 6/8 time instead of strumming. That single change made it sound like the recording rather than a karaoke track. Use a rolling pattern: thumb on beats one and four, fingers alternating on the off-beats. Keep the tempo around 72 to 78 beats per minute for the Bublé vibe.

The ii-V-I progressions throughout this tune are where the real color lives. Don't just play plain D major or G major chords. Use Dmaj7, Gmaj7, and those secondary dominants like A7 and E7. The A7 in particular is crucial on the "tenderness" line of the chorus. It creates that brief tension that pulls the ear back to D, and without it the progression sounds flat and unresolved. A lot of beginner chord charts skip the 7ths entirely, which is why their versions sound so lifeless compared to the recorded performance. If you are playing piano instead of guitar, the voicings are conceptually the same but you have to be careful with the left hand during the bridge. Don't play root position bass notes through the ii-V lines. Use inversions. A D/Fgoing into G/B then G major creates a smooth descending bass line that matches the vocal melody much better. I learned this the hard way when a pianist I was working with kept playing chunky root-position chords through the entire bridge and it sounded like a beginner hymnal version rather than something anywhere near the Bublé recording. The main difficulty with this song for most players is the transition from the bridge back into the final chorus. The E7 chord at the end of the bridge needs to feel like a release, not a jarring pivot. On guitar, letting the E7 ring into the return of D with a hammer-on or a slide helps. On piano, a quick arpeggiated roll in the right hand across the D major chord masks the transition and makes it feel intentional rather than accidental.

One practical issue you will run into: if you cannot hit the higher notes Bublé reaches, dropping the key further down to C major is your best move. It sacrifices some of the brightness but makes the chorus more manageable for most baritone voices. I always recommend transposing to C if you are an amateur player. The chord shapes are simpler and you will sound more confident singing them. There is no official chord chart that captures every nuance of the Bublé recording because his band uses subtle reharmonizations and passing chords that are not written in any standard method book. What I described above gets you 90 percent of the way there. The remaining 10 percent comes from listening carefully to specific moments in his live performances, particularly how he handles the last repeat of the chorus where he often extends the A7 cadence slightly before resolving. That's the detail that separates a competent cover from one that actually sounds like the record. For chord lookup resources, Ultimate-Guitar and Songsterr have user-submitted versions that are close enough for practice purposes. The tablature quality varies by uploader so verify against the recording rather than trusting any single sheet. My personal approach has always been to listen to the track twice, figure out the root movements by ear, then confirm the chord qualities by checking a couple of different online sources and seeing where they agree.