I’m Yours Guitar Chords – Comprehensive Guide

“I’m Yours” is a song that Jason Mraz, an American singer-songwriter, wrote. It was part of his third studio album, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things., which was released in 2008. This is undoubtedly Mraz’s most successful song. It managed to reach 6th place in the Billboard Hot 100 and continued charting for a total of 76 weeks, which was a record-breaker at the time.

You should be able to learn this song quickly if you are familiar with a few simple I’m Yours Guitar Chords on the guitar. This is also a very popular song to learn on the ukelele, so if you have one, you can try to learn it there as well!

This song’s other remarkable feats include surpassing 12.2 million downloads worldwide, making it one of the best-selling digital songs ever, and reaching 1 billion streams on Spotify.

This song is an excellent choice for you to learn if you are looking for something relatively simple to play, memorize, and mainly because it is such a popular song that anyone around you will recognize it. If you frequently find yourself among friends with some instruments, just jamming with easy and fun songs to sing and play together, you should definitely add “I’m Yours” to your repertoire.

Summary

In summary, the chord shapes that you will need to know to play this song successfully are the ones of G Major, D Major, E minor, and C Major. You will also need a guitar capo if you want to match the original recording’s pitch.

Playing the chord shapes just mentioned on the open strings position would still be fine, but the song would be in a lower key than C Major, like Jason Mraz’s recording. With these four chords, you can play the intro and every verse and chorus section. The bridge features just a couple of additional chord shapes, B minor and A7.

This guide is going to teach you how to play these chords on the guitar, show you what is happening with the strumming hand during this song, and give you useful tips on how to approach it so that you can learn it as fast and effectively as possible. There is also a short analysis of the chord progression featured in this song for those interested in music theory.

Song Overview – Time Signature and Harmony

Time Signature

Besides having just a few chords that aren’t tricky to play, one of the good things about this song is its time signature. The 4/4 time signature, also known as “common time,” is generally the most intuitive time signature for beginner musicians to understand and feel while playing. This is because most Western music is written using this time signature.

Obviously, many songs use other time signatures such as 3/4, 5/4, 6/8, or others, but it is undeniable that most of the songs that we listen to today are written using 4/4 time. In this time signature, each measure has a total of 4 beats (this is why you generally count “one, two, three, four” during songs), and a quarter note represents each beat.

Harmony – What are the chords in I’m Yours by Jason Mraz?

The song “I’m Yours” was originally written by Jason Mraz in the key of C Major. Since so many different artists have covered it, it is natural that you find versions in different keys. Generally, people change the key of a song when the original key isn’t comfortable for their voice, and they want it to be higher or lower, depending on that person’s range.

So, we have established that the key of the song is C Major. This means that C Major is the tonic or “I” chord, and all the other chords of the song have a relation with it which is dictated by the interval between them.

Each chord has its own function and color. Some of them feel closer to the root; others express a feeling of tension that is resolved when you go back to the tonic chord. Understanding the function of the chords within a key allows you to understand songs at a deeper level, improving your songwriting skills exponentially.

Most of this song is played using only 4 chords, which are the following:

• C Major
• G Major
• A minor
• F Major

Since this song is usually played with a capo on the 4th fret of the guitar, to play this chord progression, you have to use different chord shapes than when you play in the open strings position. The chord shapes you will need to use if you are playing with a capo are G Major, D Major, E minor, and C Major.

You can check the chord diagrams shown below if you need to remember how to play any of these chord shapes on the guitar. Remember, these are only relevant if you’re playing the guitar with a capo on the 4th fret, in case you want to sing it in the same key as Jason Mraz does, or if you’re going to play along to the song using an external speaker.

These shapes are easy to play, and most guitarists learn them early on, so you should not have a lot of problems. Since there are no barre chords, you don’t need to worry about playing that F Major chord – you are playing it with the C Major shape if you’re using the capo on the 4th fret.

While playing through this chord progression, you can strum freely when fretting the G Major and E minor shapes. However, when you play the D Major shape, try to at least mute the 6th string. The same goes for the C Major chord; playing the 6th open string will make it sound muddy.

I’m Yours Chord Progression Analysis

Let’s take a moment to look at this song’s chord progression with a bit more detail and figure out what is going on exactly. Doing this is recommended for any song that you learn, as it will help you understand and interiorize it much better.

This is useful when playing the song, transposing it to a different key, improvising over it, and even writing your songs later since you will be more familiar with the sensation that each type of chord can convey in a given context.

First, we establish in what key the song is. In this case, “I’m Yours” is in the key of C Major. Then, we need to check the C Major scale and look at each note, taking into account its interval with the root (the distance between each note in semitones).

The C Major scale contains the following set of notes:

• I – C (Root/Tonic)
• II – D (Major Second)
• III – E (Major Third)
• IV – F (Perfect Fourth)
• V – G (Perfect Fifth)
• VI – A (Major Sixth)
• VII – B (Major Seventh)

The chords in “I’m Yours” are C Major, G Major, A minor, and F Major. If we look at the scale, we can conclude that this chord progression is commonly referred to as a “I, V, VI, IV” progression.

• C Major (I chord, tonic)
• G Major (V chord, dominant)
• A minor (VI chord, subdominant)
• F Major (IV chord, subdominant)

The terms “tonic,” “subdominant,” and “dominant” refer to the harmonic function of each chord in a given key center. In summary, tonic chords feel like home, subdominant chords feel like they are moving away from the “tonic” sensation, and dominant chords create tension in the music that is often resolved by moving to a tonic chord. This does not need to happen all the time, though.

In “I’m Yours,” you can see that the dominant chord (G Major) resolves to A minor, a subdominant chord.

We typically represent chords in a key by a Roman numeral that tells us which degree of the scale it corresponds to. This is especially useful when transposing a song to a different key. Rather than calculating what each chord is individually, you can look at songs as a group of chord degrees that you can move up and down without a lot of thought.

In practice, if you wanted to teach “I’m Yours” to a musician that understands this concept, you could tell him that it is an I, V, VI, IV progression in the key of C Major (or any other key you want to play the song in).

How to Play I’m Yours by Jason Mraz – Strumming Pattern and Techniques

Memorizing the chords of a song and practicing how to switch from one to the next is not the only thing you have to consider when you are learning a new song. One of the most important aspects is the rhythm, which you can control using your picking hand and several techniques.

Apart from the strumming pattern you decide to use, you can also go with a fingerstyle technique instead and play patterns that are often impossible to replicate accurately with a pick.

This section will show you a few strumming patterns that can be heard on the original recording of “I’m Yours.” You can learn and play or use them as a starting point to create a different approach to the chord progression.

Strumming Pattern 1

If you listen to the original recording of “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz, you will hear him playing this strumming pattern during the first and third verse sections and the first chorus.

It is a very percussive pattern that relies heavily on the muted strums represented by the letter “X” in the guitar tab you can see below.

Remember that you should play these chord shapes with a capo on the 4th fret of the guitar’s neck if you want to play along to the original song.

Strumming Pattern 2

This is the pattern that Jason Mraz plays during the second verse, second chorus, and outro section.

It is simpler to play than the last one since it follows an eight-note pattern in which you play a muted strum on the downbeats and the chord on the upbeats.

Strumming Pattern 3

The song’s third and final strum pattern can be heard throughout the bridge section.

This one is basically the same as the second pattern, except that there are no muted strums. Instead, you strum on all downbeats and upbeats.

Practice these patterns using a metronome or slow down the original song to a comfortable tempo so that you can steadily build up your speed up to the original!

FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions about I’m Yours Guitar Chords

Closing Considerations About “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz

As you can see, “I’m Yours” is a great song that you can add to your repertoire very easily. You can play through pretty much the entire song using only 4 chords and simple strumming patterns. If you want to play and sing, the most challenging part will probably be doing those two simultaneously.

Since it is such a well-known song everywhere, it is easy to get people to join and sing or play along with you. Being this simple also makes it easy to teach it to someone else in just a couple of minutes so that they can play with you.

Remember that understanding the function of the chords in the progression (basic harmony concepts) is an excellent way to understand what is going on in this song and in others that use the same progression. Since it is prevalent, you will undoubtedly encounter more songs that use the same harmony.

Try to be creative and expand on the original strumming patterns, try to embellish the chords with other notes, but most of all, don’t stop having fun playing your guitar.

• About
• Latest Posts

Gustavo Pereira

Euphonious Touring Guitarist at Guitar Space

Gustavo isn’t like other guitar players; instead of paying for lessons from a guitar teacher, he traveled around the world to watch the greats. Along the way, he’s met some really amazing people that have shared some invaluable lessons that he hopes to share with anyone looking to learn the guitar. He doesn’t believe in all of the fancy talk that comes with learning the guitar; he wants to break down the basics so that no matter what type of musical experience you have, you’ll understand too.

Latest posts by Gustavo Pereira (see all)

• Why I Like My Line 6 POD Go Wireless (And When I Don’t Use It) - August 21, 2024
• My Supro Black Magick Reverb Head + 2×12 Cab Review – A Trip to the 70’s Rock n’ Roll Spirit - April 17, 2024
• Everlong Amp Settings Guide - January 29, 2024