Bill Withers
Ain't No Sunshine chords
Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers is a beginner song in Am, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 6 chords (Am, Em, G, Dm, Am/G, Bm7) across 3 sections: Verse ×2 → Chorus → Turnaround (last two bars). Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 78 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Em → Dm, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Amwith no capo
- Tempo
- 78BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 6all open shapes
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Ain't No Sunshine
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar in this practice sheet. Follow the time signature shown beside each section; dots mark the remaining counts in the bar. Tap a bar to hear its chord, or loop the section to practise the changes.
Chord accompaniment only. Follow the section notes for this arrangement’s timing. Songs whose words are public domain →
Verse× 2 · 4/4 · ♩=78
Chorus4/4 · ♩=78
Turnaround (last two bars)4/4 · ♩=78
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Ain't No Sunshine
Ain’t No Sunshine is three open chords doing an enormous amount of work: Am, Em and G repeat one bar each, over and over, and the song is entirely carried by that circle and by the space between the chords. Dm turns up as the turnaround that leads back to the top of the loop, which gives your ear the one moment of movement in an otherwise static form. Two small variations are worth having: the bass line can walk down through Am/G on the way to Em, and the turnaround can run through Bm7 before the Dm, which is what stops the repeat sounding like a loop and starts it sounding like a song.
Practise Am7 to Dm7 slowly. The B string is at fret 1 in both shapes, so that note can stay while the other strings change. Am7 has an open high E, while Dm7 frets it at 1; keep that small barre clear. Use quiet, short strokes and preserve the beat through the pauses.
Set the metronome to 60 and play the loop with one chord per bar, counting aloud. When that feels comfortable, add the Em, Dm turnaround and play it four times in a row, listening for the bass note on each change rather than for the chord itself. Push toward 78 only once the silences are as deliberate as the strums, and try playing the whole loop with your thumb instead of a pick: this song sounds better soft, and a pick makes it sound like a different record.
How to practise Ain't No Sunshine
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the speed marked here.
Learn the shapes easiest first
Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → Dm (x-x-0-2-3-1, beginner) → Am/G (3-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → Bm7 (x-2-0-2-0-2, beginner)
6 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
Em → Dm3×Am → Am/G1×Am → Bm71×Am → Em1×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Amevery section
- Emevery section
- GVerse
- DmChorus, Turnaround (last two bars)
- Am/GChorus
- Bm7Chorus
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 47 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 47 → 59 → 70 → 78 BPM. The tempo marked on this sheet is 78 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 70 for longer than feels necessary.
Practise each section's chord changes slowly, then play the sheet through at a steady tempo without pausing between sections.
Playing Ain't No Sunshine with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capoas written
Am Em G Dm Am/G Bm7
6 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
Abm Ebm F# C#m Abm* Bbm7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
Gm Dm F Cm Gm* Am7
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
F#m C#m E Bm F#m* Abm7
1 of 6 stay open
Fret 4
Fm Cm Eb Bbm Fm* Gm7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
Em Bm D Am Em* F#m7
4 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
Ebm Bbm C# Abm Ebm* Fm7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
Dm Am C Gm Dm* Em7
5 of 6 stay open
* this position has no separate fingering for a bass-note inversion in our chord library, so the parent chord is shown. Play that shape and the inversion note is an optional bass addition.
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Ain't No Sunshine clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Payphone, The Scientist, 505, Linger.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Ain't No Sunshine turns up across all 104 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
125bars of this chord across the songbook
35songs use this shape
Most often followed by F, 23×.
155bars of this chord across the songbook
43songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
509bars of this chord across the songbook
77songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 89×.
23bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by F, 5×.
2bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by D7/F#, 1×.
1bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Most often followed by Em, 1×.