Some songs whisper "play me softly by candlelight," and then hand you the workload of an entire orchestra. Nights In White Satin is one of those. The original had a Mellotron, strings, a flute, and the collective sadness of 1967 — and here I am trying to fit all of it onto six strings while keeping a straight face.
This is a short fingerstyle chord-melody take on The Moody Blues' immortal ballad: the wistful top-line melody and the chords underneath, played together on one solo guitar. No band, no flute, no orchestra — just thumb, fingers, and E minor doing what E minor does best (making you feel things).
How the chord-melody trick works here
The whole song basically lives on an Em–D vamp, which in the key of E minor is the i chord slouching down to the bVII — that flat-seven, Aeolian pull is exactly why it sounds so nostalgic instead of neatly resolved. In a chord-melody arrangement your thumb keeps the bass moving (E, then D) while your fingers pick out that famous descending vocal line on the top strings. The middle voices just fill in the colour.
Here's the useful takeaway: you almost never need all six strings at once. Play the melody note on top, a single bass note with your thumb, and one guide tone in between to imply the chord — that's a full, rich sound with three fingers doing the heavy lifting. If you can hum the tune while you play the bass, you already understand the arrangement better than most tab sites do. (If the minor key stuff sounds mysterious, that's the point of the whole song.)
Grab the tabs, dim the lights, and try not to reach for a Mellotron you don't own. Guitar Pro files and the PDF live over on my Patreon.