Can't Buy Me Love

Can’t Buy Me Love is fundamentally a beginner’s track, but there are still some tricky bits that can be interesting to learn at any level!

Stage 1 - The intro

Let’s start with the intro, we’re going to need E minor, A minor, D minor and G.

The structure is pretty straightforward, we’re going to play E minor for a bar, A minor for a bar, back to E minor for another bar, and back to A minor again. After that, we’re going to play D minor for a bar, and finish the intro with G for a bar.

If you’re a beginner, this is a perfect progression to practice the “universal strumming pattern”, playing one pattern per chord.

Stage 1 - The verse

On the verse, we’re going to need to play C, F and G. We only need open chord shapes, but if you can play F with a barre chord, go for it!

This verse has a very bluesy structure, and we’re going to play the same “universal” strumming pattern we’ve seen in the intro. The only thing we have to be careful with is to hit the second to last F on beat number 1, and leave the rest of the bar “empty”.

The first step to getting it up to speed is to feel very comfortable with the chord shapes and the transitions, so take your time, and try to challenge yourself with that kind of speed when you feel like everything’s solid!

Stage 1 - The chorus

The chorus is very similar to the intro we’ve seen before, but we’re going to add a C to the progression. The structure goes like this:

Here again, you can play the same “universal” pattern we’ve seen throughout this section.

Stage 2 - The pattern

If everything we’ve seen so far feels relatively easy, we can upgrade to a more specific pattern, where on the intro and chorus, we play a groovier (and therefore harder!) pattern. The idea is to hit muted strings on beat 2 to add a more percussive element to our rhythm.

On beats 3 and 4, feel free to experiment and add more strums if you like. What we want to focus on is the main groove on the first two beats! Of course, remember to keep your strumming hand moving, even if you choose to focus just on the main groove.

This pattern works perfectly well on the intro and the chorus, but when you get to the two bars of C major on the chorus, go back to the first pattern we’ve seen!

Stage 2 - The verse

On the verse, we can change the strumming to something a little bit harder, with a new pattern that has an almost country feel to it. The idea is to target the root note of your chord on beat 1. We can actually strum beat 1, without “plucking” that string, instead focusing the strum on the lower strings more than the higher strings.

We want the accent of beat 1 to be on our root note, but if you end up strumming a couple of strings at first, that’s fine!

On F, you can still use the triad we’ve seen in “Stage 1”, but try to start using the barre chord position on fret 1! You might notice that targeting lower strings on beat 1 can sometimes give you some extra time to build the rest of a chord shape, so it might be time to give it a try!

Stage 3 - The solo

The solo is in the key of C minor, even though the song is in the key of C major. This is because Can’t Buy Me Love is very much blues inspired. If this is new to you, feel free to check out our course below!

The solo starts on shape 1, with a very cool repeated bend on the G string.

You have the option to play the bend on its own, or double it with the B string on fret 8. The important thing is to control your bend so that it stops at the top. To do this, rest your pick on the G string when you want to mute it!

The second part of the phrase is played over shape 1 and goes back up the scale, all the way to fret 8 on the A string, and passing through a blue note along the way!

Once you’ve played this, we jump to a big F chord, played either with a barre chord or with a triad. As you get more comfortable with your right hand, feel free to add some groove by strumming this F as you wish. Until then, just play F and let it ring!

Once we’ve played that F, we jump back to shape 1 of the C minor pentatonic scale, and play a phrase that’s very similar to the one we’ve played at the beginning of the solo, with three bends on the G string before landing on our root note on fret 10 on the D string.

After that phrase, we change position and jump to boxes 3 and 4 of the C minor pentatonic scale. We start with a nice slide from fret 3 to 5 on the D string of shape 4, before going back to fret 1. To finish, we land on the root note which is on fret 3 on the A string.

And finally, the last part of the solo is played over the same two shapes, but this time, we’re playing with one extra note, the b7th of our pentatonic scale!