Bob Marley
Three Little Birds chords
Three Little Birds by Bob Marley is a beginner song in A, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (A, D, E, D6, E7) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse ×2 → Chorus ×2 → Outro. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 74 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: A → D, 2 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Awith no capo
- Tempo
- 74BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 5all open shapes
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Three Little Birds
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 · ♩=74
Verse× 2 · 4/4 · ♩=74
Chorus× 2 · 4/4 · ♩=74
Outro4/4 · ♩=74
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Three Little Birds
This practice sheet is built around A, D and E, with D6 in the intro and E7 as an optional dominant colour. The chords are open-position shapes, but A, D and E each use three fretting fingers in the diagrams here.
The written reggae grid places the strokes away from a heavy downbeat. Practise that grid on muted strings before adding chords, then release fretting pressure after a short stroke to leave space. Keep the rhythm even when changing from D back to A.
D6 is x-x-0-2-0-2. Compared with D x-x-0-2-3-2, release the B string from fret 3 to open B. The high E stays at fret 2: moving it higher would not create this D6. For E7, release the D string from fret 2 to open D while keeping G# on the G string.
Loop the verse slowly and count the grid aloud. Add the intro D6 only after the A, D and E changes stay in time, and check the open B of D6 remains audible.
How to practise Three Little Birds
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
A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → E (0-2-2-1-0-0, beginner) → D6 (x-x-0-2-0-2, beginner) → E7 (0-2-0-1-0-0, beginner)
5 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
A → D2×A → E2×D → A2×A → D61×
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
- Aevery section
- DVerse, Chorus
- EVerse, Chorus
- D6Intro
- E7
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 44 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 44 → 56 → 67 → 74 BPM. The tempo marked on this sheet is 74 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 67 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 Three Little Birds 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
A D E D6 E7
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
Ab C# Eb C#6 Eb7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
G C D C6 D7
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
F# B C# B6 C#7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 4
F Bb C Bb6 C7
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 5
E A B A6 B7
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
Eb Ab Bb Ab6 Bb7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
D G A G6 A7
5 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 Three Little Birds clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Sweater Weather, Payphone, The Scientist, 505.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Three Little Birds 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.
134bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 19×.
323bars of this chord across the songbook
58songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 52×.
69bars of this chord across the songbook
11songs use this shape
Most often followed by Eadd9, 6×.
8bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by Em, 4×.
31bars of this chord across the songbook
10songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 4×.