Master the Acoustic Guitar: "Tonight You Belong to Me" Tutorial

Experience‌ the delightful 32-bar song that takes you back to the Roaring Twenties. Written by Billy Rose and Lee David, it was ⁣a huge hit for singer Gene Austin in 1926, as well as Roger Wolfe Kahn and others around the same time. The song kept picking⁣ up steam in the early ’50s when Frankie Laine ‍recorded‍ his sophisticated big band version, but the biggest hit came in 1956 with a version by the teen sister duo of‍ Patience‍ and Prudence, which reached No. 4 on⁢ the charts and sold over a ⁢million copies.

“Tonight You Belong to Me” has been recorded by many other artists since then, from Dottie ‌West to Eddie Vedder and Chan Marshall (Cat Power). It has been ‍heard in commercials, films, and television shows; Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters famously ‌sang it in a charming scene in ‌the 1979 comedy The Jerk.

Let’s keep the arrangement simple⁣ and in a key (namely, D major) that allows for‍ easy, primarily open chording. Although we’re using more‍ chords than usual—nine in total, some ‌of them⁣ jazzy—they’re all⁣ pretty easy to form. Note the use of the Gm7 ⁢chord⁣ (G Bb ‍D F), which is borrowed from the key ‌of D⁤ minor, adding a‌ sophisticated ‌flavor.

Choose to either ‌fingerpick the simple accompaniment pattern⁢ shown here, or use a pick. Whichever technique you choose, play the song with a⁢ gently loping feel, as indicated by the swing eighth notes ‌symbol at the beginning of‌ the notation. In other⁢ words, instead of playing ⁣two even notes per beat, play them long-short. If you are unsure how to do this, just⁤ follow along with the video.