The Band
The Weight chords
The Weight by The Band is an intermediate song in A, played with a capo on fret 2. The whole sheet is 6 chords (G, Bm, C, D, Em, E/G#) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse ×2 → Chorus → Instrumental tag. 5 of the 6 shapes are open chords. Shapes that use a barre: Bm. It sits at roughly 72 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Bm → C, 4 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape Bm
- Key
- Awith a capo on fret 2
- Tempo
- 72BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 65 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in The Weight
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 →
Intro4/4 · ♩=72
Verse× 2 · 4/4 · ♩=72
Chorus4/4 · ♩=72
Instrumental tag4/4 · ♩=72
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play The Weight
Capo on fret 2 puts this in A, and the shapes you need are G, Bm, C, D and Em — five chords, none of them exotic. The important thing is the rhythm of the changes, not the chords themselves: this song moves in two-beat chunks, so each loop of G – Bm – C – G takes two bars, not four. If you give every chord a full bar the verse drags badly and the vocal has nowhere to sit. Count in two, treat every chord as a half bar, and the song instantly sounds like the record.
Bm is the barre chord to prepare separately. Use x-2-4-4-3-2, including the B string at fret 3, which supplies its minor third D. G to Bm rearranges several fingers; it is not a two-finger shortcut. Bm to C also changes the D string from fret 4 to fret 2, so place the C grip cleanly rather than holding the old note through the next chord.
Practise at 60 BPM with a metronome clicking in two, and loop the verse eight times without stopping, because the whole difficulty of this song is stamina and consistency rather than any single change. Then work the chorus, which is slower harmonically: G – D – C – G, with the C held for two bars at the end. Finish each practice session with the instrumental tag, G – Em – D – C, played as an even descending four, since that is the phrase everyone recognises.
How to practise The Weight
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) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → E/G# (4-2-2-1-0-0, beginner) → Bm (x-2-4-4-3-2, intermediate, needs a barre)
5 of the 6 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Bm until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
Bm → C4×C → G4×D → C4×G → Bm4×
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
- BmIntro, Verse
- Cevery section
- DChorus, Instrumental tag
- EmInstrumental tag
- E/G#Chorus
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 43 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 43 → 54 → 65 → 72 BPM. The tempo marked on this sheet is 72 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 65 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 The Weight with a capo
This sheet is written with a capo on fret 2. 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 capo
A C#m D E F#m F#*
3 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
Ab Cm C# Eb Fm F/A
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2as written
G Bm C D Em E/G#
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
F# Bbm B C# Ebm Eb*
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 4
F Am Bb C Dm D*
4 of 6 stay open
Fret 5
E Abm A B C#m C#*
2 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
Eb Gm Ab Bb Cm C/E
1 of 6 stay open
Fret 7
D F#m G A Bm B*
3 of 6 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 The Weight clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: 500 Miles, The One That Got Away, Treat You Better, Landslide.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in The Weight 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×.
84bars of this chord across the songbook
17songs use this shape
Most often followed by A, 13×.
420bars of this chord across the songbook
70songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
323bars of this chord across the songbook
58songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 52×.
155bars of this chord across the songbook
43songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
1bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Nothing else follows it in our sheet library.