Thriller chords

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Thriller | Chords + Lyrics

Intro

| C#5 | C#5 | C#sus2 | C#sus2 |
| C#m | C#m | C#sus4 | C#sus4 |
| C#dim | C#dim | C#m C#m7 | C#m7 F# E |
||: C#m bass riff :|| x8

Verse 1

||: C#m bass riff | C#m bass riff :||
It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark.
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart.
||: C#m guitar riff | C#m guitar riff :||
You try to scream, but terror takes the sound before you make it.
You start to freeze, as horror looks you right between the eyes, you’re paralyzed.

Chorus 1

Instrumental

||: C#m guitar riff | C#m guitar riff :||
Ooh, ooh.

Verse 2

||: C#m guitar riff | C#m guitar riff :||
You hear the door slam, and realize there’s nowhere left to run.
You feel the cold hand, and wonder if you’ll ever see the sun.
You close your eyes, and hope that this is just imagination.
Girl, but all the while, you hear a creature creepin’ up behind, you’re out of time.

Chorus 2

Middle 8

| F#7 | F#7 | Amaj7 | Amaj7 A B |
Night creatures call and the dead start to walk in their masquerade.
| C#m | C#m/B | A#m7b5 | Amaj7 |
There’s no escaping the jaws of the alien this time (they’re open wide)
| G#sus4 | G# |
This is the end of your life, ooh.

Verse 3

||: C#m guitar riff | C#m guitar riff :||
They’re out to get you, there’s demons closin’ in on every side.
They will possess you, unless you change that number on your dial.
Now is the time, for you and I to cuddle close together, yeah.
All through the night, I’ll save you from the terror on the screen, I’ll make you see.

Chorus 3

Chorus 4

Breakdown

||: C#m guitar riff | C#m guitar riff :||
(I’m gonna thrill you tonight)

Outro

||: C#m guitar riff | C#m guitar riff :||
Darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood, to terrorize y’all’s neighborhood (I’m gonna thrill you tonight).
And whosoever shall be found, without the soul for getting down.
Must stand and face the hounds of hell, and rot inside a corpse’s shell.

||: C#m guitar riff | C#m guitar riff :||
I’m gonna thrill you tonight. Thriller, ooh baby (thriller).
I’m gonna thrill you tonight (thriller night). Thriller, all night, oh baby.
I’m gonna thrill you tonight. Thriller, thriller night (oh baby).
I’m gonna thrill you tonight. Thriller, all night (oh baby).
Thriller night, babe (thriller night, babe), ooh.

||: C#m guitar riff | C#m guitar riff :||
The foulest stench is in the air, the funk of forty thousand years.
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb, are closing in to seal your doom.
And though you fight to stay alive, your body starts to shiver.
For no mere mortal can resist, the evil of the thriller.

Thriller’s chords, progressions, riff, and TAB

Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones’s masterpiece Thriller does have some serious chords lurking in the arrangement. Let’s dissect these section by section, this one might be a bit scary!

The intro, which is played by the keyboard player is based around a C#m chord which has one note moving up from the Root – 2nd – m3rd – 4 – b5. This is then followed by the two-bar chorus chords that outline the melody.

The rhythm of this intro is played using three 8th notes in a row, only changed at the end of every two bars. In TAB, the entire intro looks like this:

Thriller chords intro keyboard chords on the guitar in TAB.

This intro is followed by 8 bars of the bass riff, if you want to play during this time, play in unison with the bass. The verse that follows starts with just the same bass riff, only halfway through does the guitar riff appear.

Here are Thriller’s bass and guitar riffs in TAB.

Thriller chords verse bass and guitar riff TAB

The chorus is more complicated, starting with what you played during the intro, all chords are this for chorus 1.

| C#m C#m7 | C#m7 F# E | F# | F#m |
| C#m C#m7 | C#m7 F# E | F# | A F# B |

Chorus 2 is the same until the last few bars as we prepare to go to the middle 8, like this:

| F# | A F# B | C#m F#7 |

Chorus 3 is again different as we prolong the end, like this:

| F# | A F# B | D#m7b5 Dmaj7 B11 | B11 |

Chorus 4 is the same as chorus 1, although, on the record, the guitar now plays the riff, which it continues to do for the outro.

Thriller’s middle 8 section has the most chords, it took me the longest to work out, this is what I believe it is:

| F#7 | F#7 | Amaj7 | Amaj7 A B |
| C#m | C#m/B | A#m7b5 | Amaj7 |
| G#sus4 | G# |

As you play along with the original recording, using the chords and lyrics provided above, aim to play all chords on three or maybe even just two strings.

Try different chord shapes until you feel you picked out the best notes for a part that will sit nicely in the mix.

Should you be lucky enough to play Thriller with a band that has keyboards, a horn section, and three singers, you certainly can’t play big chords! Instead, you need a small, well-defined part that cuts through.

Thriller chords | Related pages

Thriller – 5 similar tunes

When you can play Thriller's chords, try these five tunes from the song book.

Michael Jackson

The King of Pop became world-famous before he was even a teenager as he signed to Motown with his brothers as The Jackson 5.

After many hits, Michael embarked on a crazy solo career that would see him become as big as Elvis and The Beatles.

Michael Jackson tunes.

Michael Jackson on the web