Traditional
Happy Birthday chords
Happy Birthday by Traditional is a beginner song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (G, D7, C, C7, D) across 3 sections: Verse → Bridge (the "happy birthday dear ..." line) → Final line (optional lift). Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 100 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: D7 → G, 5 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 100BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 5all open shapes
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Happy Birthday
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♩=100
GHappy birthday to you,
D7Happy birthday to Gyou,
Bridge (the "happy birthday dear ..." line)♩=100
CHappy birthday dear C7friend,
GHappy Cbirthday to Gyou.
Final line (optional lift)♩=100
GMay you Dlive a D7hundred Gyears,
GHappy Cbirthday to Gyou.
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday is the song you will actually be asked to play more than any other, and the plain version needs only G, D7 and C. Learn it this week and you will never be caught empty-handed at a party again. The richer version below adds C7 and D, which is what turns it from a chant into something that sounds like an arrangement — and C7 is the chord that matters, because it is the one that pushes the tune back toward G.
The melody fits over a simple waltz feel — one chord per bar, three beats each. The D7 lands on the words “to you” and creates the classic pull back to G. The second line adds C for the lift on “birthday”.
The strum is a gentle “bass, strum, strum” pattern in 3/4: hit the lowest note of the chord, then two light downstrokes. If the room is full of singers, a single downstroke per beat is enough.
Two small upgrades are worth learning. First, swap the C in the bridge for C7 by lifting your ring finger off the A string — the same one-finger move as C to C7 everywhere else, and it makes the return to G feel inevitable. Second, in the final line play G then D before the D7: the bass note walks up instead of sitting still, and the last chord lands with more weight. Transpose the whole thing to C (C, G7, F) if the melody sits too high for the person being sung to.
How to practise Happy Birthday
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) → D7 (x-x-0-2-1-2, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → C7 (x-3-2-3-1-0, 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
D7 → G5×G → D75×C → G3×G → 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
- D7every section
- Cevery section
- C7Bridge (the "happy birthday dear ..." line)
- DFinal line (optional lift)
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 60 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 60 → 75 → 90 → 100 BPM. The recorded feel is around 100 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 90 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 Happy Birthday 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 D7 C C7 D
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
F# C#7 B B7 C#
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 2
F C7 Bb Bb7 C
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
E B7 A A7 B
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Bb7 Ab Ab7 Bb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D A7 G G7 A
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
C# Ab7 F# F#7 Ab
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C G7 F F7 G
3 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 Happy Birthday 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 Happy Birthday 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×.
44bars of this chord across the songbook
12songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 20×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
9bars of this chord across the songbook
5songs use this shape
Most often followed by F, 6×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.