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. Shapes that use a barre: F. 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 in this practice sheet. Follow the time signature shown beside each section; dots mark the remaining counts in the bar. Tap a bar to hear its chord, or loop the section to practise the changes.
Chord accompaniment only. Follow the section notes for this arrangement’s timing. Songs whose words are public domain →
Intro4/4 · ♩=76
Verse4/4 · ♩=76
Chorus4/4 · ♩=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 accompaniment follows the roots, but the fingering does not move like a single staircase shape. C has the B string at fret 1 and high E open; Dm has B at fret 3 and high E at fret 1. Prepare Dm as a new triangle, then practise the return to C. Keep the bass on beat one and the right hand moving evenly through each bar.
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 speed marked here.
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 tempo marked on this sheet is 76 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 68 for longer than feels necessary.
Practise each section's chord changes slowly, then play the sheet through at a steady tempo without pausing between sections.
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: Sweater Weather, Payphone, The Scientist, 505.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Lean on Me turns up across all 104 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
420bars of this chord across the songbook
70songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
23bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by F, 5×.
155bars of this chord across the songbook
43songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
114bars of this chord across the songbook
29songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 38×.
509bars of this chord across the songbook
77songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 89×.