The Beatles
Something chords
Something by The Beatles is an intermediate song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 9 chords (C, Cmaj7, C7, F, C/E, D, D7, G, Am) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse ×2 → Chorus → Outro. 8 of the 9 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 66 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C7 → F, 2 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape F
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 66BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 98 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Something
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♩=66
Verse× 2 · ♩=66
Chorus♩=66
Outro♩=66
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Something
Something is a C major song that only looks simple. The verse is C, Cmaj7, C7, F and the whole first line is one hand shape sliding: play C, lift your index finger off the B string for Cmaj7, move it down to the first fret for C7, then drop the whole lot onto F. Nothing else moves. The second half of the verse, D, D7, G, is the part students botch — keep the same top three strings pressed, move that shape down two frets for D and D7, then back up to G, and count the G as a full bar so the line breathes instead of running into the next line.
The chorus is four bars of Am with a D7 at the end of each two-bar phrase, which is where the harmony leaves C major and the reason the song sounds wistful rather than cheerful. That D7 is also the one chord in the piece that needs a decision, because you can play the simple open shape or the four-finger version with the F sharp in the bass — learn the simple one first. Get the Am to D7 pair clean on its own for two minutes: your middle finger stays on the D string, second fret, for both chords, so only two fingers should travel.
At 66 BPM this is slow enough that rushing is the main enemy, and the change most likely to be early is C7 to F. Play the verse four times with the metronome clicking on beats two and four only, which forces you to place the change on the beat rather than just after it. Then loop the chorus ten times, because it is short and easy to under-practise. Before you finish, connect the two halves in tempo: the G at the end of the verse has to survive a full bar without you drifting, and the F to C/E descent that opens the outro is where that discipline shows.
How to practise Something
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) → Cmaj7 (x-3-2-0-0-0, beginner) → C7 (x-3-2-3-1-0, beginner) → C/E (0-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → D7 (x-x-0-2-1-2, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
8 of the 9 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
Am → D72×C → Cmaj72×C7 → F2×Cmaj7 → C72×
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
- CVerse, Outro
- Cmaj7Verse, Outro
- C7Verse, Outro
- FIntro, Verse, Outro
- C/EIntro, Outro
- DIntro, Verse
- D7Intro, Verse, Chorus
- Gevery section
- AmIntro, Chorus
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 40 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 40 → 50 → 59 → 66 BPM. The recorded feel is around 66 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 59 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 Something 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 Cmaj7 C7 F C/E D D7 G Am
8 of 9 stay open
Fret 1
B Bmaj7 B7 E B* C# C#7 F# Abm
2 of 9 stay open
Fret 2
Bb Bbmaj7 Bb7 Eb Bb* C C7 F Gm
2 of 9 stay open
Fret 3
A Amaj7 A7 D A* B B7 E F#m
7 of 9 stay open
Fret 4
Ab Abmaj7 Ab7 C# Ab* Bb Bb7 Eb Fm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
G Gmaj7 G7 C G/B A A7 D Em
9 of 9 stay open
Fret 6
F# F#maj7 F#7 B F#* Ab Ab7 C# Ebm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
F Fmaj7 F7 Bb F/A G G7 C Dm
5 of 9 stay open
* this position has no separate fingering for a bass-note inversion in our chord library, so the parent chord is shown. Play that shape and the inversion note is an optional bass addition.
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Something 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, Wish You Were Here, The Weight.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Something 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×.
9bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by C7, 2×.
9bars of this chord across the songbook
5songs use this shape
Most often followed by F, 6×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
4bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 1×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
44bars of this chord across the songbook
12songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 20×.
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×.