Unchained Melody was a huge pop hit for the 1960s pop crooners The Righteous Brothers. In this Unchained Melody Piano Tutorial You'll learn the chords, the amazing accompaniment and some very cool details!
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Unchained Melody was written in 1955 by the songwriting team of Alex North and Hy Zaret. (North was a film composer and Zaret was a Tin Pan Alley songwriter). The song was originally written as the theme song for a prison film called Unchained, and became a huge hit when it was covered in 1965 by the Righteous Brothers. The song has also been covered by Elvis in 1977 and again by the UK duo Robson and Jerome in 1995.
Unchained Melody is a very simple song with a repetitive accompaniment strategy that makes it very easy to play and sound “full”.
Step #1: Learn the chords (see lyrics and chords sheet on the next page)
Step #2: Learn the accompaniment strategy
Step #3: Bass line options
Step #4: Put it all together
Let's go!
For our first step, you can simply learn the chords in root position. Watch the video and I’ll take you through it.
Unchained Melody Lyrics and Chords
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Unchained Melody Chord Inversions and Accompaniment Strategy
The entire song is made up of root position chords with the root doubled on the top. If you want to play them through a few times, you are welcome to.
Here is the full accompaniment strategy, which you can see is just an up-and-down arpeggio of the chord:
Once you are ready, you can add the bass part in the LH. Try it as written by just playing the simple root notes or you can try the “walk downs” as I show you in the tutorial.
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