Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World - Guitar Lesson

What A Wonderful World

1968 2:19

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About What A Wonderful World

At 62 BPM in F major, this gentle fingerpicking arrangement sits in a comfortable mid-range tempo that still demands real control. The challenge is not speed but touch: every note needs to ring cleanly and the chord transitions have to feel unhurried, because any hesitation is immediately obvious at this slow, exposed pace. F major means you will be working with an F barre chord as your home base, so getting that shape locked in early is essential before tackling the full progression. The melody sits right on top of the chord voicings, so many arrangements ask you to hold down a chord while picking out the tune on the higher strings simultaneously, a technique worth isolating. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop those melody-over-chord moments slowed down until your fretting hand stops tensing up. Louis Armstrong recorded this as a vocal piece, but it translates beautifully to solo guitar in the Pop Rock fingerstyle tradition. The reward is a piece that genuinely sounds complete on a single acoustic guitar.

• The song is in F major, meaning a clean F barre chord is central to most guitar arrangements and a good early test of that shape.
• At 62 BPM the tempo is slow enough that any buzzing fret or rushed chord change is clearly audible, so clean fretting matters more than speed.
• Many solo guitar arrangements layer the vocal melody on top of the chord voicings, requiring the picking hand to bring out the top string independently.