Tracy Chapman
Fast Car chords
Fast Car by Tracy Chapman is an intermediate song in D, played with a capo on fret 2. The whole sheet is 6 chords (C, G, Em, Dsus4, Dsus2, D) across 3 sections: Verse ×4 → Chorus → Outro (loop). 5 of the 6 shapes are open chords. Shapes that use a barre: Dsus4. It sits at roughly 104 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Em → Dsus4, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape Dsus4
- Key
- Dwith a capo on fret 2
- Tempo
- 104BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 65 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Fast Car
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar in this practice sheet. Follow the time signature shown beside each section; dots mark the remaining counts in the bar. Tap a bar to hear its chord, or loop the section to practise the changes.
Chord accompaniment only. Follow the section notes for this arrangement’s timing. Songs whose words are public domain →
Verse× 4 · 4/4 · ♩=104
Chorus4/4 · ♩=104
Outro (loop)4/4 · ♩=104
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Fast Car
This standard-tuning practice arrangement uses a capo at fret 2 and C, G, Em and Dsus4 shapes. The capo raises each shape two semitones. Follow the four cells in each row as four bars, one chord per bar; the row is not a two-bar loop.
Practise C to G separately. Their A-string notes are at different frets, so do not try to keep both low fingers fixed. For Em to Dsus4, release the two low-string frets and prepare the D triangle. Plain Em has an open B string; holding B at fret 3 would add a seventh instead.
Compare Dsus4, D and Dsus2: the high E string is at fret 3, fret 2 and open respectively. Keep the G and B string notes steady through that comparison. Strum C from the A string, Em across all six strings, and the D shapes from the D string.
Start below 104 BPM, keep the changes even, and join the chorus only after the verse runs without pauses. The outro alternates the suspended shapes before its final D.
How to practise Fast Car
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 speed marked here.
Learn the shapes easiest first
C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → Dsus2 (x-x-0-2-3-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → Dsus4 (x-x-0-2-3-3, intermediate, needs a barre)
5 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Dsus4 until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G6×G → Em6×Em → D3×Em → Dsus43×
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
- Cevery section
- Gevery section
- Emevery section
- Dsus4Verse, Chorus
- Dsus2Chorus, Outro (loop)
- DChorus, Outro (loop)
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 62 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 62 → 78 → 94 → 104 BPM. The tempo marked on this sheet is 104 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 94 for longer than feels necessary.
Practise each section's chord changes slowly, then play the sheet through at a steady tempo without pausing between sections.
Playing Fast Car with a capo
This sheet is written with a capo on fret 2. 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 capo
D A F#m Esus4 Esus2 E
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
C# Ab Fm Ebsus4 Ebsus2 Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2as written
C G Em Dsus4 Dsus2 D
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
B F# Ebm C#sus4 C#sus2 C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 4
Bb F Dm Csus4 Csus2 C
3 of 6 stay open
Fret 5
A E C#m Bsus4 Bsus2 B
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
Ab Eb Cm Bbsus4 Bbsus2 Bb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
G D Bm Asus4 Asus2 A
5 of 6 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 Fast Car clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: Father and Son, 500 Miles, Shallow, The One That Got Away.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Fast Car turns up across all 104 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
420bars of this chord across the songbook
70songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
509bars of this chord across the songbook
77songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 89×.
155bars of this chord across the songbook
43songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
17bars of this chord across the songbook
6songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 5×.
3bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Nothing else follows it in our sheet library.
323bars of this chord across the songbook
58songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 52×.