John Lennon
Imagine chords
Imagine by John Lennon is a beginner song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 8 chords (C, Cmaj7, F, Am, Dm, G, G7, E7) across 2 sections: Verse → Chorus. 7 of the 8 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 76 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: F → G, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape F
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 76BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 87 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in Imagine
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♩=76
Chorus♩=76
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Imagine
Imagine is a piano song that translates to guitar beautifully: the opening C-to-Cmaj7 movement is just one finger sliding down a fret, and it instantly sets the song’s calm, meditative mood.
The verse holds C and Cmaj7 over F, then opens into Am, Dm and G for “no hell below us”. The chorus is the money moment — F, G, C, E7 — where the E7 walks the harmony up like a choir lifting. That borrowed dominant is the single most important chord in the song.
Strum it like a hymn: slow, even eighth notes, bass note first, everything ringing. The E7 shape (0-2-0-1-0-0) is the only chord beyond the beginner set, and it’s worth learning properly because the chorus falls flat without it.
How to practise Imagine
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) → Cmaj7 (x-3-2-0-0-0, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → Dm (x-x-0-2-3-1, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → G7 (3-2-0-0-0-1, beginner) → E7 (0-2-0-1-0-0, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
7 of the 8 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
F → G3×G → C3×C → Cmaj72×C → E72×
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
- Cmaj7Verse
- Fevery section
- AmVerse
- DmVerse
- Gevery section
- G7Verse
- E7Chorus
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 46 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 46 → 57 → 68 → 76 BPM. The recorded feel is around 76 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 68 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 Imagine 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 Cmaj7 F Am Dm G G7 E7
7 of 8 stay open
Fret 1
B Bmaj7 E Abm C#m F# F#7 Eb7
1 of 8 stay open
Fret 2
Bb Bbmaj7 Eb Gm Cm F F7 D7
1 of 8 stay open
Fret 3
A Amaj7 D F#m Bm E E7 C#7
5 of 8 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Abmaj7 C# Fm Bbm Eb Eb7 C7
1 of 8 stay open
Fret 5
G Gmaj7 C Em Am D D7 B7
8 of 8 stay open
Fret 6
F# F#maj7 B Ebm Abm C# C#7 Bb7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F Fmaj7 Bb Dm Gm C C7 A7
4 of 8 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 Imagine 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, Creep, Oh! Susanna, When the Saints Go Marching In.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Imagine 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×.
9bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by C7, 2×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
16bars of this chord across the songbook
6songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 4×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
33bars of this chord across the songbook
13songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 11×.
29bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 4×.