Green Day
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) chords
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day is a beginner song in Ab, played with a capo on fret 1. The whole sheet is 4 chords (G, C, D, Em) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus → Outro. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 94 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → D, 6 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Abwith a capo on fret 1
- Tempo
- 94BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 4all open shapes
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
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 →
Intro4/4 · ♩=94
Verse4/4 · ♩=94
Chorus4/4 · ♩=94
Outro4/4 · ♩=94
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
This arrangement uses G, C, D and Em with a capo at fret 1, raising the G shapes into Ab. The intro is for a quiet broken-chord accompaniment; later sections include the island strum shown in the sheet.
The displayed G has an open D string, Em has D at fret 2, and C also has D at fret 2. There is no ring-finger anchor on the D string through all three chords. Practise G to C by placing the new A-string root at fret 3 and D string at fret 2, then check the B string at fret 1.
For C to Em, release the B string and move the A-string fret from 3 to 2 while the D string stays at 2. Choose a comfortable fingering for that retained note. D uses only the top four strings, so narrow the strum when it arrives.
Start below the listed tempo and keep the verse and chorus changes even. When you add the strumming grid, maintain the same pulse through silent strokes; the right hand should not restart at each new chord.
How to practise Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
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
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 → D6×G → C6×C → G3×D → C3×
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
- EmIntro, Chorus
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 56 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 56 → 71 → 85 → 94 BPM. The tempo marked on this sheet is 94 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 85 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 Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) with a capo
This sheet is written with a capo on fret 1. 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
Ab C# Eb Fm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 1as written
G C D Em
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 2
F# B C# Ebm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 3
F Bb C Dm
2 of 4 stay open
Fret 4
E A B C#m
2 of 4 stay open
Fret 5
Eb Ab Bb Cm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 6
D G A Bm
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 7
C# F# Ab Bbm
no open shapes left, all barre
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Sweater Weather, Payphone, The Scientist, 505.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) 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.
509bars of this chord across the songbook
77songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 89×.
420bars of this chord across the songbook
70songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
323bars of this chord across the songbook
58songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 52×.
155bars of this chord across the songbook
43songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.