Welcome to our Ed Sheeran’s Perfect guitar lesson. It is a suitable song for a beginner because it only uses open chords and you only have to play downstrums throughout. Open chords are easier to strum because you don’t have to press down on multiple strings with one finger as you do with bar chords. The song is also an excellent introduction to playing songs with compound time signatures. Perfect reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was released in 2017 and comes from Ed Sheeran’s third album Divide.
Figure 1 (below) shows some of the basic notation information in the song’s score. Some beginners may need to learn more about music theory to fully understand all the information in the full score. In addition, beginners may need to learn more about reading rhythms before to attempting this song.
Song structure
Here’s how the song’s sections are laid out:
- Verse 1
- Pre-chorus
- Chorus
- Verse 2
- Pre-chorus
- Chorus
- Instrumental
- Chorus
- Outro
Place a capo on the first fret of your guitar to strum along with the audio track. The song uses the chords G, C, D, and Em. There is also another chord you may not be familiar with: the chord D/F#. This simply means playing a D chord with an F sharp as the bottom note. If you find it difficult to strum this chord, playing a D chord instead in those bars will also work.
Guitar part
Perfect has one main rhythm repeated throughout. A variation of that rhythm is played on bars 8, 16, 22, 38, and 46. On those bars, there are rests at the end. There is also another rhythm variation to the main rhythm in bar 52. Play a dotted minim on beat 3 of that bar.
Conclusion
Hope that you enjoyed our Ed Sheeren’s Perfect guitar lesson. It is a song that is quick to learn and thus allows a beginner to focus on developing smooth chord changes.
Note: Musical score excerpts in this lesson are exclusively for educational use.
