Hallelujah chords

How to play Hallelujah

Hallelujah uses C, Am7, F, G and E7 in this no-capo C-shape study of the Jeff Buckley-labelled teaching arrangement. Leonard Cohen is the songwriter. Keep standard tuning and count 6/8 as two groups of three eighth notes. The six-cell grid gives a gentle downstroke on cells 1 and 4; the displayed quarter-note 62 BPM is a practice setting for these expanded changes.

Keep the writer and selected version clear

HubGuitar’s teaching chart identifies Cohen as writer, Buckley as performer, C as concert key and open C shapes with no capo. This page follows that selected accompaniment vocabulary. It does not reconstruct every bass note, decoration or phrase length of Buckley’s recording. Other teachers may use a capo and a different shape family while reaching the same sounding key.

Buckley’s official release notes distinguish Cohen’s original from Buckley’s interpretation. That distinction matters when comparing charts: a shared song title does not establish identical guitar voicings or vocal phrasing. The performer on this page is now Buckley for the selected lesson, with Cohen credited separately as composer. Choose one arrangement before trying to combine its chord names with another version’s fingerings.

Count six eighth notes rather than six quarter beats

Say ONE-two-three FOUR-five-six, with a light attack at the beginning of each group. Each cell is one eighth note, and the two downstrokes divide the bar into two large dotted-quarter pulses. Leave the intervening cells to ring. Filling all six cells with equally heavy attacks loses that grouping even if the total count is correct.

The tempo display uses a quarter-note unit. At 62 quarter notes per minute, eighth notes run at 124 per minute, and the two larger pulses run at about 41.3 per minute. A full six-cell bar lasts about 2.90 seconds. A metronome set to dotted-quarter 62 would be faster, so do not copy the bare number between different beat units. The loop’s attack spacing is about 1.45 seconds here.

Let E7 lead into Am7

The verse alternates C and Am7 before F–G–C–G. The prechorus brings in E7 before Am7; keep the G# in E7 audible as it leads toward A. E minor has G natural instead, so it removes this particular leading-tone pull. Practise E7–Am7 as a short pair, counting through the last subdivision rather than rushing straight onto the arrival chord.

Am7 is x02010 in the displayed grip, with the open third-string G supplying the seventh. Am’s x02210 grip changes that string to A. Hear the difference slowly instead of treating the two labels as decorative spelling. Keep the fifth-string A as the bass and leave the sixth string silent. F requires a barre in the main diagram, so the page is marked intermediate even though several other shapes are open.

Read repeated boxes as held harmony

The source’s repeat-bar marks are written out here as repeated symbols, including the F and Am7 holds in the refrain and the repeated Am7 after E7. Each displayed box receives a full six-cell practice bar. Some source changes are shorter, so these are expanded accompaniment exercises; neither box count nor row breaks promise the exact vocal timing of a recording.

The refrain returns through C–Am7–C–Am7, which prepares the hand for another verse. Learn that return separately before joining the sections. When playing with a singer, agree on where the next verse starts and allow the voice to finish its phrase. No full recording form is assigned, and the grid is a generic two-attack accompaniment rather than a transcription of the recorded fingerpicking.