George Gershwin
Summertime chords
Summertime by George Gershwin is an intermediate song in Am, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (Am, Dm, E7, F, C) across 2 sections: A → B. 4 of the 5 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 70 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Am → Dm, 2 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape F
- Key
- Amwith no capo
- Tempo
- 70BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 54 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in Summertime
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 →
A♩=70
B♩=70
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Summertime
Summertime is five chords in A minor, and it does not behave like a folk song — the chords stay put for two bars at a time while the melody drifts over them. Resist the urge to fill. Set the metronome to a slow 55 and play one soft arpeggio per bar on the bottom four strings, letting each chord ring for its full count before you move. The stillness is the sound, and busy strumming ruins this tune faster than wrong notes.
The move that matters is the pivot: Dm always comes home to Am through E7, and the whole song is built from that one cadence. Practise E7 to Am on its own. E7 is an open shape and Am sits right next to it, so the change lives inside three frets and one beat. When you add Dm, keep your first finger down and let the other two move together — the bass note should land before the top strings do.
Loop the first four bars at 55 BPM for five minutes with the metronome clicking, letting each two-bar chord sit still for its full count and checking that your bass note speaks on its own. Then add the second half with its Dm and E7 resolution, and finally play the whole sixteen bars twice without stopping. Only when that drone-like feel is comfortable should you put a simple single-note melody on top, and only with the metronome still running, because the melody drifts ahead of the chords the moment nothing is holding the time.
How to practise Summertime
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
Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → Dm (x-x-0-2-3-1, beginner) → E7 (0-2-0-1-0-0, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, 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
Am → Dm2×Am → E72×Dm → E72×E7 → Am1×
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
- Amevery section
- Dmevery section
- E7every section
- F
- C
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 42 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 42 → 53 → 63 → 70 BPM. The recorded feel is around 70 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 63 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 Summertime 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
Am Dm E7 F C
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
Abm C#m Eb7 E B
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 2
Gm Cm D7 Eb Bb
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
F#m Bm C#7 D A
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
Fm Bbm C7 C# Ab
1 of 5 stay open
Fret 5
Em Am B7 C G
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
Ebm Abm Bb7 B F#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
Dm Gm A7 Bb F
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 Summertime 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 Summertime 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.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
16bars of this chord across the songbook
6songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 4×.
29bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 4×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.