Ray Charles
Georgia on My Mind chords
Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles is an intermediate song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 8 chords (C6, Cm6, C, E7, A7, Dm7, G7, F) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse → Ending. 6 of the 8 shapes are open chords and Dm7 is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 72 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: A7 → Dm7, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape Dm7
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 72BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 86 open, 2 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Georgia on My Mind
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♩=72
Verse♩=72
Ending♩=72
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Georgia on My Mind
The first thing to fix is C6 and Cm6, because they are the same grip with one finger moved and they open the song. Play C6 as a C shape with the little finger added on the G string at the 2nd fret, and Cm6 as the same grip with the middle finger shifted down to the G string at the 1st fret. Slide that one finger a single fret and nothing else changes. This is the sound people recognise before they recognise the melody.
The verse is a standard C major cadence with one trap: E7 to A7 to Dm7 to G7 walks down the circle of fifths, and each of those four chords has a different bass note, so your thumb has to move. E7 takes the low E string, A7 the open A, Dm7 the open D, G7 the low E at the 3rd fret. Play the progression as four half-note bass notes with a light chord above each, and the walk-down does the work by itself.
A7 is usually the sticking point because it needs three fingers crowded into the 2nd fret. Use the two-finger version with the index barring the D, G and B strings, or take A7 at the 3rd fret in the movable shape and slide it down to Dm7. Either is fine; what is not fine is arriving late, because Dm7 lands on a strong beat and the whole four-bar phrase leans on it.
Set the metronome to 60 and loop the Intro for three minutes, playing only the two chord changes on beats one and three with the melody notes ringing on top. Then add the verse, keeping each chord for its full bar and resisting extra strums. Georgia rewards stillness: the guitar part on the record is closer to a piano comp than to a strummed accompaniment, and the chords that matter are the ones you leave alone.
How to practise Georgia on My Mind
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
C6 (x-3-2-2-1-0, beginner) → Cm6 (x-3-1-2-1-3, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → E7 (0-2-0-1-0-0, beginner) → A7 (x-0-2-0-2-0, beginner) → G7 (3-2-0-0-0-1, beginner) → Dm7 (x-x-0-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
6 of the 8 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Dm7 until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
A7 → Dm73×Dm7 → G73×G7 → C3×C → E72×
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
- C6Intro, Ending
- Cm6Intro
- CVerse, Ending
- E7Verse
- A7Verse, Ending
- Dm7every section
- G7every section
- FEnding
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 43 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 43 → 54 → 65 → 72 BPM. The recorded feel is around 72 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 65 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 Georgia on My Mind 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
C6 Cm6 C E7 A7 Dm7 G7 F
6 of 8 stay open
Fret 1
B6 Bm6 B Eb7 Ab7 C#m7 F#7 E
2 of 8 stay open
Fret 2
Bb6 Bbm6 Bb D7 G7 Cm7 F7 Eb
2 of 8 stay open
Fret 3
A6 Am6 A C#7 F#7 Bm7 E7 D
5 of 8 stay open
Fret 4
Ab6 Abm6 Ab C7 F7 Bbm7 Eb7 C#
1 of 8 stay open
Fret 5
G6 Gm6 G B7 E7 Am7 D7 C
8 of 8 stay open
Fret 6
F#6 F#m6 F# Bb7 Eb7 Abm7 C#7 B
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F6 Fm6 F A7 D7 Gm7 C7 Bb
3 of 8 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 Georgia on My Mind 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 Georgia on My Mind 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.
13bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by Cm6, 3×.
3bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by Dm7, 2×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
29bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 4×.
47bars of this chord across the songbook
14songs use this shape
Most often followed by Dm7, 10×.
29bars of this chord across the songbook
6songs use this shape
Most often followed by G7, 13×.
33bars of this chord across the songbook
13songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 11×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.