Your Song chords

How to play Your Song

Play Your Song by Elton John with D-family shapes and capo 1 in standard tuning. The accompaniment sounds in Eb. This simplified guitar arrangement keeps the descending bass and provides the complete section route from a teacher’s chart. Every box is expanded into a four-beat practice hold at 60 BPM; use those holds to learn the changes before following the original piano’s faster changes within a bar.

Match the D shapes to the sounding key

D, G and A shapes sound as Eb, Ab and Bb with the capo at fret 1. F#m becomes Gm, Bm becomes Cm, and Em7 becomes Fm7. Treat the capo as the nut when reading the diagrams. A second-fret note in a shape is physically at fret 3, while an open string is stopped by the capo at fret 1.

Carl Brown’s guitar lesson explains the standard-tuning setup and the capo needed to raise its open-position arrangement into the original key. Starting without a capo is useful for learning the hand movements, but it sounds a semitone lower. Retune after fitting the capo if the bass strings have been pulled sharp; extra clamping pressure is not a substitute for a cleanly seated capo.

Keep the descending bass audible

The central change is Bm–Bm/A–Bm/G#–G. In the diagrams the lowest notes are B, A, G# and G. At capo 1 they sound as C, Bb, A and Ab. The slash chord names tell you which note should be lowest; they do not ask you to play two separate full chords at once.

For Bm/A, release the fifth-string second fret while retaining the upper minor grip. The open fifth string must ring. For Bm/G#, move to 4-x-4-4-3-x and mute strings 5 and 1. Sound the bass alone before brushing the upper strings. Replacing every symbol with ordinary Bm preserves some upper notes but removes the descent that makes this passage distinctive. Do not let the muted fifth string accidentally sound an A under the G# chord.

Follow both verse endings through the form

The form reads Intro, Verse A, Verse B, Chorus 1, Intro, Verse A, Verse B, Chorus 2, Coda. The second Intro is the interlude using the same chord material. This route and the simplified chord choices come from Relax and Learn Guitar’s Your Song chart. Our A and B labels distinguish the two verse units printed together there.

Verse A ends D–Em7–G–A; Verse B changes that last A to D. The shared opening can make it tempting to repeat the first ending automatically. Practise the last four boxes of each unit separately and say the final chord before playing it. The coda revisits the descending bass, then returns through D, G and A to its final D shape. The section route is complete even though the player’s equal-length boxes deliberately slow down the harmony.

Separate bass placement from fingerpicking detail

Begin with the four downstrokes shown in each eight-slot grid. The empty positions are the eighth-note spaces between quarter-note strokes. Choose the lowest written string for the first attack: string 4 for D, string 5 for Bm and string 6 for Bm/G#. This makes the movement audible before you attempt a fuller accompaniment.

The chorus exercises include both Em7 and Em; the second chorus also uses Em in its final line. Listen for the extra D in Em7 rather than assuming the longer name is cosmetic. Keep F#m and Bm light enough to move without squeezing continuously. Once every bass note arrives on time, try a quiet bass attack followed by upper chord tones of your own choosing. The exercises do not transcribe the piano melody or prescribe its exact fingerpicking pattern.