Luiz Bonfa
Black Orpheus chords
Black Orpheus by Luiz Bonfa is an advanced song in Dm, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 7 chords (Dm7, Dm7b5, Cm9, Gm7, A7, Bb7, Fmaj7) across 3 sections: A1 → A2 → B. 2 of the 7 shapes are open chords. Shapes that use a barre: Dm7, Dm7b5, Cm9, Gm7, Bb7. It sits at roughly 132 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Dm7 → Dm7b5, once.
- Difficulty
- Advancedbarre shape Dm7b5
- Key
- Dmwith no capo
- Tempo
- 132BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 72 open, 5 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Black Orpheus
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 →
A14/4 · ♩=132
A24/4 · ♩=132
B4/4 · ♩=132
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Black Orpheus
This D-minor practice arrangement moves through Dm7, Dm7b5, Gm7 and A7 in its first row. Compare Dm7 and Dm7b5 by listening for A becoming Ab. The harmony changes one note, but the open diagrams use different grips, so there is no need to force a single-finger slide.
Dm7b5 here is x-x-0-1-1-1. The open D gives the root, with Ab, C and F across the top three strings. Pick those four strings separately before joining Gm7. Each cell in the sheet is a full practice bar; the half-diminished chord is not limited to two beats here.
Cm9 has C, Eb, G, Bb and D. Use the diagram’s Eb on the D string at fret 1 and its upper-string barre at fret 3. This is not just a little finger added to a Cm barre. In the A2 and B sections it leads toward Fmaj7, the relative major of D minor.
Practise Cm9 to the open Fmaj7 x-x-3-2-1-0 slowly. Then join the sections with a gentle broken-chord accompaniment, keeping the bass and the next chord change on time.
How to practise Black Orpheus
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
A7 (x-0-2-0-2-0, beginner) → Fmaj7 (x-x-3-2-1-0, beginner) → Dm7 (x-x-0-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre) → Cm9 (x-3-1-3-3-3, intermediate, needs a barre) → Gm7 (3-5-3-3-3-3, intermediate, needs a barre) → Bb7 (x-1-3-1-3-1, intermediate, needs a barre) → Dm7b5 (x-x-0-1-1-1, advanced, needs a barre)
2 of the 7 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Dm7b5 until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
A7 → Dm73×Bb7 → A73×Fmaj7 → Bb73×Cm9 → Fmaj72×
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
- Dm7every section
- Dm7b5A1
- Cm9A2, B
- Gm7A1, B
- A7every section
- Bb7every section
- Fmaj7A2, B
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 79 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 79 → 99 → 119 → 132 BPM. The tempo marked on this sheet is 132 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 119 for longer than feels necessary.
The section to leave until last is A1 (8 bars in this sheet).
Playing Black Orpheus with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. At every other capo position, at least one of these chords would need a fingering our chord library does not carry, so a full chart would be incomplete. We would rather show nothing than a row with a gap in it. Play it as written, or use the transpose buttons in the toolbar above to move the song into a key whose shapes you already know.
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Black Orpheus clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More advanced songs to learn after this one: While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Father and Son, 500 Miles, Shallow.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Black Orpheus 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.
29bars of this chord across the songbook
6songs use this shape
Most often followed by G7, 13×.
6bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by Cm, 1×.
7bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by Dm7b5, 3×.
12bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 1×.
49bars of this chord across the songbook
15songs use this shape
Most often followed by Dm7, 10×.
10bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 3×.
15bars of this chord across the songbook
5songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 4×.