Bill Withers
Lean on Me chords
Lean on Me by Bill Withers is a beginner song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (C, Dm, Em, F, G) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus. 4 of the 5 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: Em → F, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape F
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 76BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 54 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Lean on Me
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♩=76
Verse♩=76
Chorus♩=76
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Lean on Me
Lean on Me is the best soul song for a first-timer because every chord is open and the movement is a staircase. The loop walks up C, Dm, Em, F and then back down F, Em, Dm to G, so your hand climbs one step at a time and never jumps. Learn the ascent first, then the descent, and the song is yours.
The whole feel lives in the bass line. Hit the root of each chord on beat one, then strum lightly through the rest of the bar, and keep the strumming hand moving in constant eighths even when you are not sounding strings. That pulse is most of the groove, and it also hides imperfect changes. Between C and Dm only the ring and middle fingers travel, so let the index finger stay put as an anchor.
Set the metronome to 62 and loop the four-bar staircase until you can hold a conversation while playing it — that is the right difficulty target. Add the chorus only when the loop feels boring, since the chords are identical and the difference is entirely how hard you play. Push to 76 BPM once the bass note lands on beat one every time, because this groove dies when the downbeat slips.
How to practise Lean on Me
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) → Dm (x-x-0-2-3-1, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, 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 → Dm3×Dm → Em3×Dm → G3×Em → Dm3×
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
- Dmevery section
- Emevery section
- Fevery section
- Gevery section
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 Lean on Me 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 Dm Em F G
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
B C#m Ebm E F#
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 2
Bb Cm Dm Eb F
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
A Bm C#m D E
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Bbm Cm C# Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G Am Bm C D
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
F# Abm Bbm B C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F Gm Am Bb C
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 Lean on Me 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, Hallelujah, Oh! Susanna.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Lean on Me 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×.
16bars of this chord across the songbook
6songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 4×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 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×.