Traditional
Amazing Grace chords
Amazing Grace by Traditional is a beginner song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (G, G7, C, Em, D) across 2 sections: Verse → Refrain (repeat verse). Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 80 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → D, 2 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 80BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 5all open shapes
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in Amazing Grace
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Verse♩=80
GAmazing G7grace! how sweet the sound,
CThat saved a Gwretch like me!
EmI once was Clost, but now am found,
DWas blind, but Gnow I see.
G'Twas grace that G7taught my heart to fear,
CAnd grace my Gfears relieved;
EmHow precious Cdid that grace appear
DThe hour I Gfirst believed!
GThrough many G7dangers, toils and snares,
CI have already Gcome;
Em'Tis grace hath Cbrought me safe thus far,
DAnd grace will Glead me home.
Refrain (repeat verse)♩=80
GWhen we've been G7there ten thousand years,
CBright shining Gas the sun,
EmWe've no less Cdays to sing God's praise
DThan when we'd Gfirst begun.
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace is the first song many guitarists learn by heart, and it’s a beautiful study in voice-leading: the G7 pulls into C, C falls back to G, and the Em in the second line adds the one moment of shade before the D resolves home.
Play it as a slow 3/4 hymn — bass note, strum, strum — and let every chord ring to the end of the bar. For a fingerstyle arrangement, arpeggiate the chords with your thumb on the bass strings and let the top strings sing over it.
It also transposes beautifully: move everything up a whole step (A, A7, D, F#m, E) if a singer needs a higher key. The progression is so stable that the song survives any strumming style, from brushed campfire to church-quiet fingerpicking.
How to practise Amazing Grace
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → G7 (3-2-0-0-0-1, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner)
5 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → D2×C → G2×D → G2×Em → C2×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Gevery section
- G7every section
- Cevery section
- Emevery section
- Devery section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 48 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 48 → 60 → 72 → 80 BPM. The recorded feel is around 80 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 72 for longer than feels necessary.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing Amazing Grace with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capoas written
G G7 C Em D
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
F# F#7 B Ebm C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
F F7 Bb Dm C
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
E E7 A C#m B
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Eb7 Ab Cm Bb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D D7 G Bm A
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
C# C#7 F# Bbm Ab
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C C7 F Am G
4 of 5 stay open
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Amazing Grace clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Wonderwall, Let It Be, Creep, Hallelujah.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Amazing Grace turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
33bars of this chord across the songbook
13songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 11×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.