Wish You Were Here chords

How to play Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here uses two different groups of guitar chords: Em7, G and A7sus4 for the intro harmony, then C, D, Am and G for the verse. Play this accompaniment in standard tuning without a capo. The 72 BPM boxes are chord-only studies, each lasting four beats; they preserve the selected changes without pretending to transcribe the intro riff or its original durations.

Keep the verse out of the intro

JustinGuitar’s five-level lesson separates the intro’s three-chord vocabulary from the later verse progression. The verse first moves C–D–Am–G, then returns D–C–Am–G. That second line starts on D, not on another C. Learn the full eight-entry route before repeating it.

The earlier chart mixed the verse changes into its intro and placed extra intro harmony inside the verse. Those are now separate studies. To hear the boundary clearly, play the last G of the intro, pause deliberately, and start the verse on C. Remove that pause only when the two sections feel distinct under the fingers. A clean boundary is more useful than an unbroken loop through the wrong section.

Hear why A7sus4 is not A major

Lauren Bateman’s chord chart agrees on Em7, G and A7sus4 for the opening harmony. A7sus4 contains A, D, E and G. An ordinary A major contains A, C# and E instead. Replacing the suspended seventh chord with A therefore changes two parts of the harmony; it is not merely an easier spelling of the same sound.

The diagram used here is x-0-2-2-3-3. Start on the open fifth string and leave the sixth string silent. The fretted second and first strings add D and G above the A-and-E foundation. Check them individually before strumming. Keep their notes clear when moving toward G, and release any finger that the next diagram no longer needs rather than forcing every grip to share the same anchors.

Treat the diagrams as accompaniment voicings

Our Em7 is 0-2-0-0-0-0: its open fourth string supplies D, the minor seventh above E. The source lesson also demonstrates a different Em7 grip with two fingers retained on the high strings. Both can contain the same chord tones, but the upper melody and movement differ. The supplied generic chord diagram is not a promise to reproduce that recorded voicing.

Em7 and G can include the lowest string; C and Am begin on string 5, and D begins on string 4. Keep those different bass entries audible while you learn the verse. The picked lead line, hammer-ons, twelve-string texture and solo are outside this chord study. Follow the linked lesson for those details instead of trying to recover them from a row of chord names.

Use the section route with an honest practice clock

The route follows Lauren’s printed arrangement: intro, three verses separated by interludes, then a final interlude. Here the intro and interlude each have nine chord entries, while the verse has eight. Every entry receives four practice beats. Those counts describe this exercise; they do not independently establish how many original bars or vocal syllables belong to each change.

Start the downstroke loop at 72 BPM and finish a whole section before stopping. Keep the final G distinct from the G you may reach on the next pass. Once the left hand is reliable, return to the source for its finer strumming and timing. Credits to Roger Waters and David Gilmour are listed in the published lead-sheet edition; Pink Floyd remains the performing group.