Ed Sheeran
Perfect chords
Perfect by Ed Sheeran is a beginner song in Ab, played with a capo on fret 1. The whole sheet is 5 chords (G, Em, C, D, Am) across 3 sections: Verse ×2 → Pre-chorus → Chorus ×2. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 63 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → D, 4 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Abwith a capo on fret 1
- Tempo
- 63BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 5all open shapes
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Perfect
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 →
Verse× 2 · ♩=63
Pre-chorus♩=63
Chorus× 2 · ♩=63
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Perfect
Perfect is the most-played wedding song of the streaming era, and guitar-wise it’s a gift: capo on fret 1, then nothing but G, Em, C and D in the verse and chorus. The capo puts the song in Ab, so you can play simple open shapes and still match the record.
The verse and chorus share the same four-chord loop, which means you learn half the song in five minutes. The pre-chorus adds C and Am and moves the chords around the D for a gentle lift before the chorus drops back in.
Strum it soft and steady — two downstrokes and an upstroke per beat, with the bass note of each chord hit first on beat one. It’s a slow 6/8-feel waltz, so count in three and let the low strings carry the pulse. Beginners can replace the full Em with Em7 for easier fretting.
How to practise Perfect
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) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner)
5 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → D4×Em → C3×G → Em2×D → C1×
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
- Emevery section
- Cevery section
- Devery section
- Am
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 38 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 38 → 47 → 57 → 63 BPM. The recorded feel is around 63 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 57 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 Perfect 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 Fm C# Eb Bbm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 1as written
G Em C D Am
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 2
F# Ebm B C# Abm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 3
F Dm Bb C Gm
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
E C#m A B F#m
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 5
Eb Cm Ab Bb Fm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 6
D Bm G A Em
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 7
C# Bbm F# Ab Ebm
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 Perfect 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 Perfect 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×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.