Emeli Sandé – Next to Me (Instrumental Tab)

The Olympics coinciding with Adele’s maternity leave certainly worked out well for Emeli Sandé.

My mum requested this one. I wasn’t intending to tab it so it’s pretty messy and busked together. I’d recommend you using this as a basis rather than copying it exactly.

Some pointers:

Bars 1 to 4: Picked with thumb on the C-string and index on the E.

Bar 5: For the first three notes here (and in the same phrase in the rest of the song) I’m doing a bit of a triplet strum. I strum down all the strings with my index finger, then I play the g-string with my thumb, then I pick the A-string with my index finger.

Bars 5 to 21: Other than that, it’s almost all down strums in this section. I’m even strumming rather than picking the single notes.

The ones in brackets are backing strums – play them a bit quieter.

Bars 22 to 26: This bit is a nod to the drums-only section of the song. Back to thumb on C and index on E.

Bars 32 – 39: In the, “you’ll find him next to me,” bits of the song I’ve had to fudge the melody on the “next” because it goes down to a B. For this final few bars I take this section up an octave so I can include the B. You could use this version all the way through but I thought the switch in octaves was a bit too sharp to do that.

Melody Version

Here’s tab for the melody along with the chords to help you build your own version. Or just play an easy version.

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