Leonard Cohen
Hallelujah chords
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen is a beginner song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 4 chords (C, Am, F, G) across 2 sections: Verse → Chorus. 3 of the 4 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 62 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: F → G, 5 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape F
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 62BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 43 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in Hallelujah
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♩=62
Chorus♩=62
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Hallelujah
Hallelujah is the definitive slow-burn acoustic ballad, and in the key of C it uses only five open chords. The verse rocks gently between C and Am before the famous “it goes like this — the fourth, the fifth” lift, where F and G do the melodic heavy lifting.
Most players pick the verse and strum the chorus, which mirrors how the song builds: fingerpicking the first two lines, a light strum as it opens up, and full chords for the closing “Hallelujah”. A simple p-i-m-a pattern over C and Am is enough to sound faithful.
Watch the timing on the F-to-G change in the chorus — it lands on the word “fourth” and pushes the whole song forward. Keep the tempo around 60 BPM and let the chords ring; nothing here should ever feel rushed.
How to practise Hallelujah
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
C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
3 of the 4 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
F → G5×G → C4×C → G3×C → Am2×
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
- Cevery section
- Amevery section
- Fevery section
- Gevery section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 37 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 37 → 47 → 56 → 62 BPM. The recorded feel is around 62 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 56 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 Hallelujah 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
C Am F G
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 1
B Abm E F#
1 of 4 stay open
Fret 2
Bb Gm Eb F
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 3
A F#m D E
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Fm C# Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G Em C D
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 6
F# Ebm B C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F Dm Bb C
2 of 4 stay open
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Hallelujah clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Wonderwall, Let It Be, Creep, Oh! Susanna.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Hallelujah 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.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.