Green Day
Wake Me Up When September Ends chords
Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day is a beginner song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (G, C, Am, Em, F) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus. 4 of the 5 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 105 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: F → C, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape F
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 105BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 54 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Wake Me Up When September Ends
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♩=105
Verse♩=105
Chorus♩=105
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Wake Me Up When September Ends
Wake Me Up When September Ends is the quiet Green Day song, and its guitar part is built from five open chords: C, G, Am, Em and F. There is no capo and no barre if you play the small four-string F, so the only thing standing between you and the song is the order of the chords. The verse is C, G, Am, C, then F, C and back to G, and the chorus starts on Am and climbs through Em and F — which is why it sounds like the song opening up.
Start the song with a picked figure rather than a strum: thumb on the bass note, then the top two strings one after another. When the band comes in, switch to full down strums on the beat and let each chord ring as long as possible. The G to C change is the one to drill — keep your ring finger on the D string at fret 3 through both shapes, so only two fingers actually move.
Practise at 85 BPM and loop the verse line with a metronome for a few minutes, watching the bass note land on beat one each time you change. Then add the chorus, so the shift from quiet picking to full strumming becomes a decision you make rather than an accident of enthusiasm. Play the whole form in order, then drop back to silence for the final verse, exactly as the record does.
How to practise Wake Me Up When September Ends
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) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
4 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
C → G4×F → C3×Am → C2×Am → Em2×
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
- Amevery section
- EmChorus
- Fevery section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 63 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 63 → 79 → 95 → 105 BPM. The recorded feel is around 105 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 95 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 Wake Me Up When September Ends 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 Am Em F
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
F# B Abm Ebm E
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 2
F Bb Gm Dm Eb
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
E A F#m C#m D
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Ab Fm Cm C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D G Em Bm C
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
C# F# Ebm Bbm B
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C F Dm Am Bb
3 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 Wake Me Up When September Ends 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, Creep, Oh! Susanna, When the Saints Go Marching In.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Wake Me Up When September Ends 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×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.