The Lumineers
Ho Hey chords
Ho Hey by The Lumineers is a beginner song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (C, Csus4, Am, G, F) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus → Bridge. 4 of the 5 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 80 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: F → C, 2 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape F
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 80BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 54 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Ho Hey
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 →
Intro♩=80
Verse♩=80
Chorus♩=80
Bridge♩=80
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Ho Hey
Ho Hey looks like a three-chord campfire song until you notice the sus4: the intro and the verse are a C to Csus4 vamp, which means one finger moving and everything else staying exactly where it is. Csus4 is C with the third finger lifted off the A string — leave your other three fingers planted and just lift and replace that one.
The whole song sits in open C with no capo, so what you actually practise is rhythm. The record sounds like a drum kit, and it is really your hand hitting the strings: a downstroke on beat one, then muted palm strokes for the rest of the bar with the chords ringing on top. Play the chord, then slap the strings with the heel of your hand on beats two and four.
Set the metronome to 70 and loop the C to Csus4 vamp for two minutes while tapping your foot. Then add the Am to G move that closes each verse — it is the one real chord change in the song, and it is where the stomp tends to fall apart. Raise the tempo to 80 only when the mute strokes are even.
How to practise Ho Hey
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) → Csus4 (x-3-3-0-1-1, 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)
4 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → Csus410×Csus4 → C5×G → C4×Am → G3×
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
- Csus4Intro, Verse
- AmVerse, Chorus
- GVerse, Chorus, Bridge
- FBridge
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 48 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 48 → 60 → 72 → 80 BPM. The recorded feel is around 80 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 72 for longer than feels necessary.
The section to leave until last is Bridge (8 bars in this sheet).
Playing Ho Hey 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 Csus4 Am G F
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
B Bsus4 Abm F# E
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 2
Bb Bbsus4 Gm F Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 3
A Asus4 F#m E D
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Absus4 Fm Eb C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G Gsus4 Em D C
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
F# F#sus4 Ebm C# B
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F Fsus4 Dm C Bb
2 of 5 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 Ho Hey 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 Ho Hey 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×.
10bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 5×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.