The Beatles
Let It Be chords
Let It Be by The Beatles is a beginner song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 6 chords (C, G, Am, F, Em, Dm) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse ×2 → Bridge. 5 of the 6 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 72 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: G → F, 5 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape F
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 72BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 65 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Let It Be
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♩=72
Verse× 2 · ♩=72
Bridge♩=72
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Let It Be
Let It Be is the perfect first piano-style ballad to translate to guitar: five open chords, a gentle half-time feel, and the most forgiving strumming pattern in pop music. If you can play C, G, Am and F, you can play this song tonight.
The verse rides the classic I–V–vi–IV loop before landing on the walk-down F – Em – Dm – C, which is a brilliant exercise in changing one finger at a time. The bridge shifts to Am and G before resolving back home.
The biggest hurdle is the F chord. Play the mini-barre shape (x-x-3-2-1-1) if the full barre hasn’t clicked yet, and keep the strum even: two downstrokes per beat, accenting beat one. Slow and steady sounds more like the record than fast and sloppy.
How to practise Let It Be
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) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → Dm (x-x-0-2-3-1, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
5 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G5×G → F5×F → C3×Am → F2×
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
- Gevery section
- Amevery section
- Fevery section
- EmIntro, Verse
- DmIntro, Verse
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 43 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 43 → 54 → 65 → 72 BPM. The recorded feel is around 72 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 65 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 It Be 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 Am F Em Dm
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
B F# Abm E Ebm C#m
1 of 6 stay open
Fret 2
Bb F Gm Eb Dm Cm
1 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
A E F#m D C#m Bm
3 of 6 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Eb Fm C# Cm Bbm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G D Em C Bm Am
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
F# C# Ebm B Bbm Abm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F C Dm Bb Am Gm
3 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 It Be 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 Let It Be 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×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
16bars of this chord across the songbook
6songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 4×.