Bob Marley
Redemption Song chords
Redemption Song by Bob Marley is an intermediate song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 6 chords (G, Em, Em7, C, Am, D) across 4 sections: Verse ×2 → Chorus → Instrumental → Outro. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 74 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → D, 6 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediateno barre needed
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 74BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 6all open shapes
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Redemption Song
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× 2 · ♩=74
Chorus♩=74
Instrumental♩=74
Outro♩=74
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Redemption Song
Redemption Song is played with no capo and almost no chord movement, which is exactly why it is hard to make it sound like the record. The verse is G, Em, C, Am with one chord per bar, and the trick is that your ring finger stays anchored on the B string, third fret, for both G and Em and for the C as well. Em7 is that same Em shape with the D string left open, and it appears in the odd lines, so verse one is really G, Em7, C, Am and the second half is G, Em, C, Am. The carol ends with C to D.
The chorus is G, C, D, G and then C, D, Em, Em7, and the two-bar move from C through D into G is the only place you have to change bass notes cleanly. Practise the C to D pair on its own for two minutes: your middle finger stays on the D string, second fret, for both chords, so nothing should move except the ring and index fingers. The C, D, Em ending is a walk-up, not a jump, and it is where a strummed version usually falls apart into separate chords instead of one continuous line.
The right hand is the real work. Marley strums downstrokes with the backs of his fingers, which is why the guitar sounds like a drum and not like a guitar, and the detail that matters is that the bass notes and the upper strings are struck together, never separately. If you use a pick, aim at the bottom four strings and keep the high E quiet through the verses. The half-measure changes — C to D to G inside one bar — land on beats three and four, so at 60 BPM count the bar out loud until those internal changes feel like the beat rather than an interruption. Add the instrumental loop of Em, Em7, C, D last and play it eight times without stopping.
How to practise Redemption Song
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
G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → Em7 (0-2-0-0-0-0, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner)
6 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → D6×C → Am4×Em7 → C4×Em → Em73×
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
- GVerse, Chorus, Outro
- EmVerse, Chorus, Instrumental
- Em7Verse, Chorus, Instrumental
- Cevery section
- AmVerse, Outro
- Devery section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 44 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 44 → 56 → 67 → 74 BPM. The recorded feel is around 74 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 67 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 Redemption Song 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
G Em Em7 C Am D
6 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
F# Ebm Ebm7 B Abm C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
F Dm Dm7 Bb Gm C
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
E C#m C#m7 A F#m B
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Cm Cm7 Ab Fm Bb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D Bm Bm7 G Em A
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
C# Bbm Bbm7 F# Ebm Ab
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C Am Am7 F Dm G
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 Redemption Song clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: Hotel California, Hey Jude, The Weight, Blackbird.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Redemption Song 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.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
11bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 4×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.