Great Is Thy Faithfulness Chris Rice Chords

Getting Chris Rice's Version Right

The Chris Rice arrangement of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" is basically a slower, fingerpicked take on the traditional hymn. He plays it in the key of G, mostly open chords, with a steady alternating bass pattern that gives it that drifting, contemplative feel he was known for. It's not complicated harmonically, but getting the rhythm right is where most people stumble. Here's the full progression broken down section by section. The verses follow this loop: G – C – D7 – Em
G – C – D7 – Am – D7

The chorus ("Great is Thy faithfulness...") goes like this: C – G – D7 – Em
C – G – D7 – Am – D7 And the bridge — the part that goes "Morning by morning new mercies I see" — uses C and G7 instead of the D7 you'd normally expect, which gives it that lifted quality before dropping back into the final chorus on the G.

Great Is Thy Faithfulness Chris Rice Chords

What makes this arrangement distinct from a standard hymnbook approach is the way he treats the D7. In most versions you see, the D7 is strummed flat. Rice picks it — usually thumb on the low D string, then fingers brushing the top three strings — and lets it ring into the following chord rather than cutting it dead. That decays into the Em or Am underneath it, which is what creates that suspended, unresolved mood the song lives in. If you're playing along with a recording, one thing that tripped me up at first: Rice sometimes uses an add9 flavor on the G chord. It's not a full Gadd9 — it's more of a voicing where his pinky lightly touches the high E string fretted at the third fret while his thumb keeps the open low E going. It only shows up on a few chord changes, mostly at the start of phrases. Most people just play a standard open G and it sounds fine. But if you're trying to match the record exactly, try that pinky shape on the first G of each verse and it instantly gets closer. Another practical detail — the tempo. Rice plays this somewhere around 68 to 72 BPM, very loosely. He's not locking into a rigid metronomic grid. The feel is more like a slow waltz that occasionally drags behind the beat. If you practice with a metronome set too rigidly, it will sound stiff. I found that tapping my foot at about 70 and letting the pick hand breathe naturally worked better than trying to lock every beat.

Here's the full chord map laid out cleanly so you can copy it onto a music stand or your phone: Verse: G | C | D7 | Em | G | C | D7 | Am – D7 Chorus: C | G | D7 | Em | C | G | D7 | Am – D7

Bridge: C | G7 | C | G7 | C | G | D7 The song repeats the chorus two or three times at the end, usually fading out on the final D7 going back to G. Rice often ends on an open G with the high E string ringing — same add9 pinky touch I mentioned. One downside to this arrangement: the fingerpicking pattern assumes you're comfortable with a thumb-led Travis-pick style. If your thumb isn't independent enough to hold the alternating bass while your fingers brush the treble strings, it will sound muddy. In that case, switching to simple down-up strums on the same chords will still sound good and faithful to the spirit of the piece. The original recording is about the mood, not the technique flex.

For a downloadable chord sheet, the closest legal source is probably a site like Ultimate-Guitar or Songsterr — search for "Great Is Thy Faithfulness Chris Rice" and you'll find user-submitted tabs that are usually accurate to this progression. Just be aware that some of those uploads flatten the rhythm into straight 4/4 strumming patterns, which loses the feel. If you need something that matches the picking pattern more closely, writing it out by ear from the album version is faster than you'd think — maybe 20 minutes if you already know your open chords cold. The album it appears on is Better Than Life, released in 2003. That's the version most people reference.