Eagles
Take It Easy chords
Take It Easy by Eagles is a beginner song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 6 chords (G, D, C, Em, Am, G7) across 3 sections: Verse → Chorus → Outro. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 138 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → G, 7 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 138BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 6all open shapes
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Take It Easy
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♩=138
Chorus♩=138
Outro♩=138
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Take It Easy
Six open chords, no barres, and a shuffle that does most of the work for you. The verse is built from two bars — G with a quick D and C, then G, D, C and back to G — while the chorus pulls the same chords into a different order and starts on Em, which is why it suddenly sounds sad in the middle of a very sunny song. Nothing here is hard to finger; the difficulty is keeping the lazy, swinging feel while the chords change on the off-beats rather than on the downbeat.
Two changes are worth drilling. Going from G to D, keep your ring finger on the third fret and simply slide it from the top E string down to the B string; the index and middle fingers only shift one string each, so the whole move is a flick of the wrist rather than a rebuild. Going from Am to C is even cheaper: the index finger on the B string at fret 1 and the middle finger on the D string at fret 2 are identical in both chords, so only the ring finger has to move, from the G string at fret 2 across to the A string at fret 3.
Set the metronome to 105 and loop the verse for five minutes with a bass note on beat one and a light down-up on the rest. Once the chords change without a stumble, move to 120 and then to the record’s relaxed 138, which only works if your right hand stays loose. Finish by practising the outro separately: the G7 that appears after the final chorus is the only new shape in the song, and it is one finger away from the G you have been playing all along.
How to practise Take It Easy
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) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → G7 (3-2-0-0-0-1, beginner)
6 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G7×Am → C2×D → C2×G → C2×
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
- Gevery section
- DVerse
- Cevery section
- EmChorus
- AmChorus
- G7Outro
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 83 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 83 → 104 → 124 → 138 BPM. The recorded feel is around 138 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 124 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 Take It Easy 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 D C Em Am G7
6 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
F# C# B Ebm Abm F#7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
F C Bb Dm Gm F7
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
E B A C#m F#m E7
3 of 6 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Bb Ab Cm Fm Eb7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D A G Bm Em D7
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
C# Ab F# Bbm Ebm C#7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C G F Am Dm C7
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 Take It Easy 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 Take It Easy 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×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
33bars of this chord across the songbook
13songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 11×.