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, 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 →
Intro♩=74
Verse× 2 · ♩=74
Chorus× 2 · ♩=74
Outro♩=74
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Three Little Birds
Three Little Birds is the friendliest introduction to reggae guitar: three chords (A, D and E), one bouncy skank rhythm, and the most reassuring chorus ever written.
Reggae guitar is about the off-beat: you strum short, choked upstrokes on the “and” of each beat, leaving the downbeats empty for the bass and drums. Mute the strings with your fretting hand the moment after each stroke to get that dry, percussive chop. The verse and chorus share the same A → D → A → E loop, so the whole song is really one groove.
If the skank feels unnatural at first, play steady downstrokes until the changes are automatic, then start leaving the downbeats out. The E-to-A change is the only transition to drill, and it repeats every four bars.
Two of the four chords here are variations rather than new shapes, and they are what stop the loop sounding like a rehearsal. D6 is D with the third finger pushed one fret higher on the high E string (x-x-0-2-0-2), and it is the chord you hear in the intro. E7 is E with the ring finger lifted off the D string (0-2-0-1-0-0), and it is the softer way to land back on A when the chorus comes round again — keep E for the verse and switch to E7 for the last bar of the chorus, and the loop stops feeling mechanical.
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 recorded speed.
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 recorded feel is around 74 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 67 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 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
5 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: Wonderwall, Let It Be, Creep, Hallelujah.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Three Little Birds 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.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
64bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs 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×.
29bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 4×.