Creedence Clearwater Revival
Proud Mary chords
Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater Revival is an intermediate song in D, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 6 chords (C, A, G, F, D, Bm) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus → Outro. 4 of the 6 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: A → Bm, once.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape F
- Key
- Dwith no capo
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 64 open, 2 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Proud Mary
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♩=90
Verse♩=90
Chorus♩=90
Outro♩=90
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Proud Mary
Most of this song sits on a single D chord, so the difficulty is not the chord changes — it is the feel. The verses are a one-chord vamp with a rolling eight-note groove that has to stay perfectly even while you sing over it, and the chorus suddenly moves to A, Bm and back to D. The Bm is the only shape that needs real work; the rest are open chords you probably already own. Expect to spend your first week on the right hand rather than the left.
The intro is where the arrangement shows its cards: C down to A, then C, A, G and F, then a hard landing on D. Those descending chords are worth practising as a separate exercise, played slowly with a bass note on every beat, because they set up the mood for everything that follows. When you reach the chorus, the move from A to Bm is a small slide: keep the shape you are holding and shift the whole thing up two frets, so the only thing changing is where your hand sits on the neck. That is far easier than rebuilding the chord from scratch.
Practise at 80 BPM, four beats per chord, and loop the verse vamp until your strumming hand can keep going for two minutes without speeding up. Then add the chorus and finally the intro in its own right. The record famously starts slow and then doubles its tempo, so once the whole song is comfortable at 80, try playing the first two verses at that speed and then pushing to 130 for the rest — that gear change is the point of the song, and it only works if you can hold a groove.
How to practise Proud Mary
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
C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre) → Bm (x-2-4-4-3-2, intermediate, needs a barre)
4 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → A3×A → Bm1×A → C1×A → G1×
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
- CIntro
- AIntro, Chorus, Outro
- GIntro
- FIntro
- Devery section
- BmChorus
Climb the tempo ladder
This sheet does not list a tempo, so pick one where every change is clean and use the metronome to move up in 4 BPM steps.
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 Proud Mary 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
C A G F D Bm
4 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
B Ab F# E C# Bbm
1 of 6 stay open
Fret 2
Bb G F Eb C Am
3 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
A F# E D B Abm
3 of 6 stay open
Fret 4
Ab F Eb C# Bb Gm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G E D C A F#m
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
F# Eb C# B Ab Fm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F D C Bb G Em
4 of 6 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 Proud Mary 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 Proud Mary 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.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
53bars of this chord across the songbook
11songs use this shape
Most often followed by A, 12×.