Van Morrison
Brown Eyed Girl chords
Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison is an intermediate song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 4 chords (G, C, D, Em) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse ×2 → Chorus → Bridge. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 149 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → G, 5 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediateno barre needed
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 149BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 4all open shapes
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Brown Eyed Girl
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.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
Intro♩=149
Verse× 2 · ♩=149
Chorus♩=149
Bridge♩=149
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Brown Eyed Girl
The whole song is four open chords, but it is a shuffle, not a straight strum, and that feel is what separates a good version from a stiff one. The verse is G – C – G – D, two bars per line, and the chorus rides the identical loop, so the only new material is the bridge: C – D – G – Em, answered by C – D – G. Play the first and third beats slightly long and the second and fourth short, and the swing appears without any extra effort.
The bridge is where players come unstuck, because the Em arrives at the end of a fast bar and needs to be ready before you get there. Leave your index finger on the B string when you move from C to D, and picture the Em shape while you are still holding D. For the G to C change, swap the plain C for a Cadd9 in the verses: the ring and little fingers stay planted on the B and top E strings at fret 3 and you simply move two fingers, which keeps the groove intact at this tempo.
Loop the verse at 100 BPM with four down-up strums per bar before you try it at speed, and count the shuffle out loud so the long-short pairing is deliberate rather than accidental. Then practise the bridge on its own: C – D – G – Em twenty times in a row, stopping only to check that the little finger is not flying off the neck. When both halves are solid, join them and record yourself; rushing the chorus is the single most common fault in this song.
How to practise Brown Eyed Girl
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) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner)
4 of the 4 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G5×G → C5×G → D5×C → D2×
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
- Cevery section
- Devery section
- EmBridge
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 89 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 89 → 112 → 134 → 149 BPM. The recorded feel is around 149 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 134 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 Brown Eyed Girl 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 C D Em
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 1
F# B C# Ebm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
F Bb C Dm
2 of 4 stay open
Fret 3
E A B C#m
2 of 4 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Ab Bb Cm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D G A Bm
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 6
C# F# Ab Bbm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C F G Am
3 of 4 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 Brown Eyed Girl clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: Hotel California, Hey Jude, Wish You Were Here, The Weight.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Brown Eyed Girl 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×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.