Passenger
Let Her Go chords
Let Her Go by Passenger is a beginner song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 6 chords (C, G, D, Em, Bm, Am) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus → Outro. 5 of the 6 shapes are open chords and Bm is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 75 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: D → Bm, 5 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape Bm
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 75BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 65 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Let Her Go
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♩=75
Verse♩=75
Chorus♩=75
Outro♩=75
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Let Her Go
The verse is a rolling four-chord loop, C G D Em, one chord per bar, and it only works if your strumming hand never stops moving. Use a pattern of down, down-up, up-down-up, all eighth notes, with the chord change landing on beat one and the pick never pausing over the strings. Count in eighths out loud at first; the melody sits on top of the loop and the vocal phrasing is what makes people rush the change.
The chorus moves to Em C D Bm and the Bm is the real work. Use the four-string Bm at the 2nd fret and mute the low E string with the side of your index finger, or take the full barre at the 2nd fret if your hand is ready. The change from Em to C to D to Bm is a diagonal walk down the neck, so practise it as a block: four beats each, metronome at 60, no strumming, until your hand knows the path without looking at the fretboard.
Two details make the record sound the way it does. First, the D chord is often played with the little finger added on the high E string at the 3rd fret, which keeps the top note ringing as you move to Bm. Second, the picking hand plays quieter on the verse and opens up in the chorus instead of speeding up. Keep the volume difference, not the tempo difference.
In the Outro the final chord is Am rather than Bm, and that substitution is worth learning because it changes the colour from sad to resigned. Am is the C shape with the ring finger lifted off the A string, so the change from C is a single finger moving. Play C, G, D, then Am and let the last chord ring out over the open high E string instead of closing on the tonic. If you want the recorded ending, go back to Em after the Am; if you are playing solo, staying on Am is easier and sounds deliberate.
Set the metronome to 65 and play the Verse loop eight times without stopping, then the Chorus twice, then back to the Verse, exactly as the record does. Five minutes of that is enough to expose the one weak change, which is almost always Em to C. Drill that pair for a minute on its own and the whole song tightens up.
How to practise Let Her Go
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) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → Bm (x-2-4-4-3-2, intermediate, needs a barre)
5 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Bm until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G5×D → Bm5×G → D5×C → D4×
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
- GVerse, Outro
- Devery section
- Emevery section
- BmIntro, Verse, Chorus
- AmOutro
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 45 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 45 → 56 → 68 → 75 BPM. The recorded feel is around 75 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 Let Her Go 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 G D Em Bm Am
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
B F# C# Ebm Bbm Abm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
Bb F C Dm Am Gm
3 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
A E B C#m Abm F#m
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Eb Bb Cm Gm Fm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G D A Bm F#m Em
4 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
F# C# Ab Bbm Fm Ebm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F C G Am Em Dm
5 of 6 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 Let Her Go 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, Hallelujah.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Let Her Go 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×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
53bars of this chord across the songbook
11songs use this shape
Most often followed by A, 12×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.