The Beatles
Blackbird chords
Blackbird by The Beatles is an intermediate song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (G, Am7, G/B, C, A7) across 2 sections: Verse → Instrumental (repeat verse). Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 94 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: G/B → C, 4 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediateno barre needed
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 94BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 5all open shapes
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in Blackbird
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
Verse♩=94
Instrumental (repeat verse)♩=94
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Blackbird
Blackbird is the song that teaches fingerstyle independence: the vocal melody, the bass line and a constant drone all happen on one guitar at the same time. Paul McCartney’s original part is fingerpicked, not strummed.
The chords themselves are friendly — G, Am7, G/B and C — but it’s the G/B slash chord that creates the famous descending bass movement: G, B, C walking under the melody. Play the bass note first with your thumb, then pluck the top strings with index and middle fingers.
The A7 near the end of the verse is the one moment of tension before the line resolves back to G. Practise at half tempo and let every note ring into the next; the piece only sounds like itself when nothing is muffled.
How to practise Blackbird
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 recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → Am7 (x-0-2-0-1-0, beginner) → G/B (x-2-0-0-3-3, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → A7 (x-0-2-0-2-0, beginner)
5 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
G/B → C4×Am7 → G/B3×C → G/B3×G → Am73×
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
- Gevery section
- Am7every section
- G/Bevery section
- Cevery section
- A7every section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 56 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 56 → 71 → 85 → 94 BPM. The recorded feel is around 94 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 85 for longer than feels necessary.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing Blackbird 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
G Am7 G/B C A7
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
F# Abm7 F#* B Ab7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
F Gm7 F/A Bb G7
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
E F#m7 E* A F#7
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Fm7 Eb* Ab F7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D Em7 D* G E7
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
C# Ebm7 C#* F# Eb7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C Dm7 C/E F D7
3 of 5 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 Blackbird clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: Hotel California, Hey Jude, Wish You Were Here, The Weight.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Blackbird turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
10bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by Dm7, 4×.
7bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 4×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
47bars of this chord across the songbook
14songs use this shape
Most often followed by Dm7, 10×.