Ed Sheeran
Thinking Out Loud chords
Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran is a beginner song in D, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 6 chords (D, G, A, Bm, F#m, Em) across 3 sections: Verse → Pre-Chorus → Chorus. 4 of the 6 shapes are open chords and Bm is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 79 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: A → Bm, 2 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape Bm
- Key
- Dwith no capo
- Tempo
- 79BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 64 open, 2 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Thinking Out Loud
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♩=79
Pre-Chorus♩=79
Chorus♩=79
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Thinking Out Loud
Standard tuning, no capo, and the verse is a two-bar cell that never changes: D and G for two beats each, then A held for a full bar. Because the cell is short, the whole song lives in your right hand. Use a gentle pattern of down, down-up, up-down-up and keep the same dynamic level throughout, since the original is built on a soft loop rather than on accents. Count in eighths out loud at first and resist pushing the A, which is the beat everyone rushes.
The one change that catches everybody is the Bm that closes the second verse line and opens the chorus. Take the four-string Bm at the 2nd fret with the low E string muted, and approach it from A rather than from the open position: A sits on the D, G and B strings at the 2nd fret, so you can slide the barre up two frets and move only one finger. Ten minutes of slow repetition on A to Bm to A is worth more here than an hour of playing the song badly.
The pre-chorus drops into Em and the chorus ends on a descending line through Bm, A, G and F#m before it loops. F#m is a full barre at the 2nd fret with the ring finger on the A string at the 4th fret; if that buzzes, play the four-string version on the top four strings. The descent is the moment to slow your strumming hand down rather than speed it up, letting each chord sit for its full bar so the bass line walks down in steps.
Set the metronome to 68 and loop the Verse, Pre-Chorus and Chorus in order for five minutes without stopping. The difficulty of this song is entirely in maintaining a quiet, even groove for thirty-two bars, not in any single chord. When you can play the whole loop while humming the melody you have it; if the tempo creeps upward, you do not, so keep the metronome running and count out loud through the F#m bar.
How to practise Thinking Out Loud
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
D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → Bm (x-2-4-4-3-2, intermediate, needs a barre) → F#m (2-4-4-2-2-2, intermediate, needs a barre)
4 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
D → G4×G → A3×A → Bm2×Bm → A2×
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
- Devery section
- GVerse, Chorus
- Aevery section
- Bmevery section
- F#mChorus
- EmPre-Chorus
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 47 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 47 → 59 → 71 → 79 BPM. The recorded feel is around 79 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 71 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 Thinking Out Loud 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
D G A Bm F#m Em
4 of 6 stay open
Fret 1
C# F# Ab Bbm Fm Ebm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
C F G Am Em Dm
5 of 6 stay open
Fret 3
B E F# Abm Ebm C#m
1 of 6 stay open
Fret 4
Bb Eb F Gm Dm Cm
1 of 6 stay open
Fret 5
A D E F#m C#m Bm
3 of 6 stay open
Fret 6
Ab C# Eb Fm Cm Bbm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
G C D Em Bm Am
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 Thinking Out Loud 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 Thinking Out Loud 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.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.
53bars of this chord across the songbook
11songs use this shape
Most often followed by A, 12×.
9bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 4×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.