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 in this practice sheet. Follow the time signature shown beside each section; dots mark the remaining counts in the bar. Tap a bar to hear its chord, or loop the section to practise the changes.
Chord accompaniment only. Follow the section notes for this arrangement’s timing. Songs whose words are public domain →
Verse4/4 · ♩=138
Chorus4/4 · ♩=138
Outro4/4 · ♩=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 speed marked here.
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 tempo marked on this sheet is 138 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 124 for longer than feels necessary.
Practise each section's chord changes slowly, then play the sheet through at a steady tempo without pausing between sections.
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: Payphone, The Scientist, 505, Linger.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Take It Easy turns up across all 104 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
509bars of this chord across the songbook
77songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 89×.
323bars of this chord across the songbook
58songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 52×.
420bars of this chord across the songbook
70songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
155bars of this chord across the songbook
43songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
125bars of this chord across the songbook
35songs use this shape
Most often followed by F, 23×.
33bars of this chord across the songbook
13songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 11×.