Traditional
Oh! Susanna chords
Oh! Susanna by Traditional is a beginner song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 3 chords (G, C, D7) across 2 sections: Verse → Chorus. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 116 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → G, 4 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 116BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 3all open shapes
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in Oh! Susanna
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♩=116
bouncy, two beats per chord
GI come from Alabama with my Cbanjo on my Gknee,
GI'm goin' to CLouisiana my true D7love for to Gsee.
Chorus♩=116
GOh! Susanna, Coh don't you cry for Gme,
GFor I come from CAlabama with my D7banjo on my Gknee.
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Oh! Susanna
Oh! Susanna is the song Stephen Foster sold for a hundred dollars in 1848, and it went on to
become the unofficial anthem of the California Gold Rush. It is also one of the cleanest examples
of a two-chord-plus-turnaround song: G and C do almost everything, and D7 exists purely to
send you back to the top.
The rhythm is a polka, not a pop strum. Two beats per chord, downstrokes locked to the beat, and upstrokes that catch only the top three strings. If you play it with a modern four-beat strum it still works but it stops sounding like 1848, which is most of the charm.
Because the progression is so short, it is a good song to practise one specific thing rather than
the whole arrangement. Set the metronome to 100 and change chords on the beat without looking at
your fretting hand. When that is automatic, move the D7 a beat earlier and hear how the song
leans forward. That small displacement is the beginning of every country and folk rhythm trick
you will meet later.
How to practise Oh! Susanna
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) → D7 (x-x-0-2-1-2, beginner)
3 of the 3 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G4×G → C4×G → D74×D7 → G2×
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
- D7every section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 70 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 70 → 87 → 104 → 116 BPM. The recorded feel is around 116 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 104 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 Oh! Susanna 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 D7
3 of 3 stay open
Fret 1
F# B C#7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
F Bb C7
1 of 3 stay open
Fret 3
E A B7
3 of 3 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Ab Bb7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D G A7
3 of 3 stay open
Fret 6
C# F# Ab7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C F G7
2 of 3 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 Oh! Susanna 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 Oh! Susanna 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×.
44bars of this chord across the songbook
12songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 20×.