Vance Joy
Riptide chords
Riptide by Vance Joy is a beginner song in Bbm, played with a capo on fret 1. The whole sheet is 4 chords (Am, G, C, Fmaj7) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus → Bridge. 3 of the 4 shapes are open chords and Fmaj7 is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 102 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → Fmaj7, 2 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape Fmaj7
- Key
- Bbmwith a capo on fret 1
- Tempo
- 102BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 43 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Riptide
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♩=102
Verse♩=102
Chorus♩=102
Bridge♩=102
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Riptide
Riptide is four open chords in a fixed order, and that is exactly why it is worth learning properly: the song is a metronome for your right hand. Capo on fret 1 puts the shapes in Bb minor without you touching a barre. The pattern is Am, G and C around and around, one chord per bar most of the time, and the only real variation in the whole tune is how long each chord is held.
Play it with a constant down-up-down-up eighth-note hand and let the accents fall where the words fall. The common mistake is stopping the hand between chords; keep it moving and lift your fingers only when the next chord needs them. The Am to G change is the pivot, so keep your ring finger on the B string at fret 3 through both shapes and the change costs you only two fingers.
Set the metronome to 85 and loop Am, G and C for five minutes without stopping, listening for buzzes rather than checking your speed. When the loop is clean, add the Fmaj7 that appears in the bridge — it is the only new shape in the song — and practise C to Fmaj7 ten times slowly. Then push toward the recorded 102 and notice that the rhythm, not the chords, is what gets harder.
How to practise Riptide
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
Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → Fmaj7 (1-3-2-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
3 of the 4 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Fmaj7 until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
Am → G8×G → C8×C → Am2×C → Fmaj72×
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
- Amevery section
- Gevery section
- Cevery section
- Fmaj7Bridge
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 61 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 61 → 77 → 92 → 102 BPM. The recorded feel is around 102 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 92 for longer than feels necessary.
The section to leave until last is Bridge (8 bars in this sheet).
Playing Riptide 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
Bbm Ab C# F#maj7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 1as written
Am G C Fmaj7
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 2
Abm F# B Emaj7
1 of 4 stay open
Fret 3
Gm F Bb Ebmaj7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 4
F#m E A Dmaj7
2 of 4 stay open
Fret 5
Fm Eb Ab C#maj7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 6
Em D G Cmaj7
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 7
Ebm C# F# Bmaj7
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 Riptide 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, Oh! Susanna.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Riptide 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.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
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×.
8bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by Bb7, 3×.