Pink Floyd
Wish You Were Here chords
Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd is an intermediate song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 6 chords (C, D, Am, G, Em, A) across 2 sections: Intro → Verse. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 61 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Am → G, 4 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediateno barre needed
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 61BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 6all open shapes
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in Wish You Were Here
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♩=61
Verse♩=61
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Wish You Were Here
Wish You Were Here is the acoustic benchmark: its intro riff is one of the most recognised guitar passages ever recorded, and the chord part underneath is deceptively simple — C, D, Am and G in a repeating eight-bar loop.
The intro combines the riff (played over Em and G) with the strummed loop. Start by nailing the chords first, then layer the riff: the opening phrase is hammered and pulled on the high E and B strings over G, which is why so many players learn their first hammer-ons from this song.
The A major in the second half of the verse is the emotional peak — let it ring before you drop back to G. Keep the tempo slow and unhurried; the space between the chords is as important as the chords themselves.
How to practise Wish You Were Here
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) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner)
6 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
Am → G4×Em → A4×Em → G4×A → 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
- Cevery section
- Devery section
- Amevery section
- Gevery section
- Emevery section
- Aevery section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 37 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 37 → 46 → 55 → 61 BPM. The recorded feel is around 61 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 55 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 Wish You Were Here 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 D Am G Em A
6 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
B C# Abm F# Ebm Ab
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
Bb C Gm F Dm G
3 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
A B F#m E C#m F#
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Bb Fm Eb Cm F
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G A Em D Bm E
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
F# Ab Ebm C# Bbm Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F G Dm C Am D
5 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 Wish You Were Here 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, The Weight, Blackbird.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Wish You Were Here 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×.
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×.
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×.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.