The Righteous Brothers
Unchained Melody chords
Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers is an intermediate song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (C, Am, F, G, Fm) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse → B section → Final cadence. 3 of the 5 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 66 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: F → Fm, once.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape F
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 66BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 53 open, 2 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Unchained Melody
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♩=66
Verse♩=66
B section♩=66
Final cadence♩=66
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Unchained Melody
Unchained Melody is a slow ballad that rewards patience, and its opening progression — C, Am, F, G — is the exact four-chord loop every songwriter since 1965 has borrowed. Because the chords are that familiar, everything comes down to how you voice them: play the bass note first, then roll the top three strings, so each chord blooms instead of arriving as a block of sound.
Watch your right hand for the real difficulty. At this tempo the hand must keep moving in steady triplets even where you do not strike, otherwise the pulse dies between chords and the singer has nothing to hang on to. Put every change in the last eighth of the bar so the new chord is already sounding on beat one. Keep G as a plain open shape rather than reaching for a seventh; this arrangement does not need it.
Practise at 55 BPM and loop C to Am to F for two minutes, listening for a clean bass note on every change rather than for speed. Then play the B section, which is the same motion in a new order, and finish with the F to Fm cadence that closes the song: one finger moves, and it is the most emotional moment in the whole arrangement. Steadiness, not tempo, is the entire skill here.
How to practise Unchained Melody
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) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre) → Fm (1-3-3-1-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
3 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
F → G5×C → Am4×Am → F3×G → C2×
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
- Cevery section
- AmIntro, Verse, B section
- Fevery section
- GIntro, Verse, B section
- FmFinal cadence
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 40 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 40 → 50 → 59 → 66 BPM. The recorded feel is around 66 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 59 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 Unchained Melody 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 Am F G Fm
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
B Abm E F# Em
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 2
Bb Gm Eb F Ebm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 3
A F#m D E Dm
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Fm C# Eb C#m
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G Em C D Cm
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
F# Ebm B C# Bm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F Dm Bb C Bbm
2 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 Unchained Melody 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 Unchained Melody 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×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
1bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 1×.