It’s got Jesus, Elvis, horses, vampires, bad boys in the shadows and girls with broken hearts. That’s not exactly a recipe for looking on the bright side of life, but somehow Free Fallin’ is still really fun to sing. And it’s pretty simple to know how to play Free Fallin’ with just four simplified chords

Now that you’ve taken your first steps as a guitarist and finished my blog post about How to Play Easy Guitar Songs Around a Campfire, it’s time to take another step as a guitarist and Learn How to play Free Fallin by Tom Petty (or more recently John Mayer). By the time you finish this post (and practicing) you’ll know how to play a simple version of Free Fallin and lift people’s spirits or break a good girl’s heart. Let’s go with lifting spirits.

Knowing HOW TO PLAY FREE FALLIN’ helped turn an attitude freefall into a memorable night.

It had been a bad month that week. We had arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico on September 28, just a few days after Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on a scale none of us had never seen. I was one of twenty-two amateur radio operators selected from over two-hundred applicants to support the Red Cross with communication on that devastated island. We stepped off the plane to no electricity, no beds, limited food and water, no internet, no phone, pretty much nothing that we take for granted in modern culture. I had deployed for three hurricanes before coming to Puerto Rico, but none of those prepared me for what I saw after Hurricane Maria.

That night a dozen or so of us sat under a cloudless sky, the stars made more vibrant due to the lack of electricity to power lights anywhere on the island. It was hot, it was muggy, and showers were a distant memory. Morale had ebbed pretty low. I had been selected for the team because of my wilderness survival experience, but my well-honed primitive fire building skills seemed useless in 90 plus degrees with high humidity even after dark.

Then someone said, “I found a guitar over in that abandoned building. Does anyone know how to use it?”

“Hey, I know how to use it for more than kindling,” I offered. “Anyone up for a sing-a-long?”

Surprisingly, the guitar had survived the hurricane pretty well. It took just a minute or two to get a semblance of tuning.

Then, we hit a roadblock. “What song does everybody know?”

Of course, we all knew Twinkle, Twinkle, but that seemed a bit cliched with the stars providing our only light. Most of us could sing The Itsy Bitsy Spider, but singing about rain coming down a waterspout didn’t seem right, given what had brought us there.

Just as we were about to give up on finding something we all knew someone said, “Wow, we just go from bad to worse. It’s like we’re in an attitude freefall.

!LIGHTBULB MOMENT!

We threw pensive glances at each other with that look of, “Do ya’ think?”

The chorus repeats itself over and over and Tom Petty’s unique voice makes the melody easy to remember. I just had to figure out the chords because searching Googling “How to Play Free Fallin’” wasn’t an option in the current state of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure.

It took a few minutes, but the repetitive nature of the pattern made it pretty easy. Especially, using the system I introduced in How to Play Easy Guitar Songs. Soon we were singing this classic song, though some of the lyrics were a bit mangled.

Now, you will learn how to play Free Fallin’ with the same simplified chords that I used that night. They weren’t exactly right, but nobody complained. In fact, those four simple guitar chords helped create a morale high point on a pretty bad day. They can for you, too. 

Repeating Eighth Notes is
How To Strum Free Fallin’

In How to Play Easy Guitar Songs we learned to strum in groups of four. The strums that we used are called DOWN STRUMS, because the hand moves (you guessed it) down. Also, the rhythm we used is called QUARTER NOTES. When we put QUARTER NOTES along with counting in FOURS we get Four-Four time. It’s written with a 4 over a 4 like a fraction, because that’s sort of what it is.

4/4

Think of it as showing a fraction of four fourths. The bottom number tells us what kind of note gets a count. If we replace the top 4 with a 1, then we’d call the fraction one fourth, or one quarter. See where the name QUARTER NOTE comes from? Music and math are pretty closely related.

The top number tells us how many of the notes are in a measure, or how many we count before starting the count, again. In this case 4/4 time is counted like this:

1        2        3        4        | 1        2        3        4        | etc.

You’ve probably realized that we counted and played quarter notes for How Great is Our God in How to Play Easy Guitar Songs.

To know how to play Free Fallin’ we need to understand eighth notes. As the name implies eighth notes half as long as quarter notes and are played exactly twice as fast. And rather than count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, the numbers stay the same, but we add “ands” between each number, like this:

1   &   2   &   3   &   4   &   | 1   &   2   &   3  &  4  & | etc.

Here’s a video demonstrating quarter notes and how eighth notes relate.

Syncopation and Accents are
How To Play Free Fallin’

All of the eighth notes when playing Free Fallin’ are down strums. When we played How Great is Our God each chord changed on a count 1 and repeated for at least 4 counts.

The chords for Free Fallin’ will sometimes change on 1, sometimes on an “&” or both. Emphasizing or changing chords on an “&” instead of a number is called “syncopation.” We can practice the syncopation for how to play Free Fallin’ by playing a G chord and a Cadd9 chord with down strums on all the eight notes like this:

G                                          Cadd9
1    &    2    &    3    &    4    &    | 1    &    2    &    3    &    4    &   |

Here’s a play along demonstration video.

-LEAD MAGNET: Download your free lyric and simplified chord sheet for how to play a Free Fallin’.-

The Most Simple Version of
How to Play Free Fallin’

The easy way (not the real way) to play Free Fallin’ uses only three of the four chords we learned in my blog post How to Play Easy Guitar Songs: G, Cadd9, and Dsus. To play the basic pattern change the chords on the emphasized counts. These are called the “chord changes.” (Notice that all changes come on emphasized counts, but not all emphasized counts have changes.) 

G                    Cadd9                            Cadd9           Dsus
1     &     2     &     3     &     4     &     | 1     &     2     &     3     &     4     &    |

Let’s practice it together in this video.

How to Play Free Fallin’ a Little More Like the Real Version

By using all four chords that we learned in How to Play Easy Guitar Songs we can sound a little more like the radio version of Free Fallin’. (To save space I’ll indicate the Cadd9 chord with C9 and Emin7 with Em7. This is a common practice on many chord sheets.)

G                  C9                                    C9   Em7     Dsus
1     &     2     &     3     &     4     &     | 1     &     2     &     3     &     4     &    |

Here’s another video to help you practice.

Learning a New Chord is the Final Step in How to Play Free Fallin’
[THE EASY VERSION]

The final step in learning How to Play Free Fallin’ [SIMPLE VERSION] is to learn the D chord. You already learned how to play Dsus chord in How to Play Easy Guitar Songs. The D chord is almost exactly the same, but it’s time to move one of our anchor fingers. Here’s the chord symbol and box for the D chord.

Notice that finger 4 isn’t used for the D chord and finger 3 is the only anchor finger. To play it we lift finger 4 and put finger 2 on the skinny E string at fret 2. Our thumb still rests on the other E and A strings to keep them from vibrating. (The girl in the picture above is playing a D chord.)

The chord change from Cadd9 or Emin7 to D can be tricky, so here’s a video to help you practice.

It’s Time to Put it All Together to Play Free Fallin’
[THE EASY VERSION]

Believe it or not, you now know how to play a simple version of Free Fallin’. Like all the other easy guitar songs that I teach, this isn’t the real version, but it’s close enough to use around a campfire. Just play the pattern over and over.

The intro and chorus chord changes for How to Play Free Fallin’ [THE EASY VERSION] look like this:

G                   C9                                   C9   Em7      D
1     &     2     &     3     &     4     &     | 1     &     2     &     3     &     4     &    |

The verse chords are the same, but don’t play the Em7.

G                  C9                                   C9                  D
1     &     2     &     3     &     4     &     | 1     &     2     &     3     &     4     &    |

Let’s try it together.

-CLICK HERE TO RECEIVE A FREE PRINTABLE COPY OF THE CHORDS AND WORDS TO FREE FALLIN’-

As with most simplified chords, this isn’t the way that Tom Petty wrote it. John Mayer might snort in haughty derision if he heard me playing it, or maybe not because I heard that he’s a pretty nice guy. Anyway, these aren’t the real chords, they’re an approximation. Also, they’re in the key of G. The original is in the key of F, so if you try to play along with a recording it will sound REALLY bad.

But these chords are good enough for you to have some fun, even on a really bad day.

Take my complete course on How to Play Easy Guitar Songs, including How to Play Free Fallin’ at www.outdoorcore.com

Survival is more than just staying alive.