The Beatles
While My Guitar Gently Weeps chords
While My Guitar Gently Weeps by The Beatles is an advanced song in Am, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 7 chords (Am, Am/G, G, D, F, C, A) across 4 sections: Intro → Verse ×3 → Chorus (A major) → Outro. 6 of the 7 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 116 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Am/G → F, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Advancedbarre shape F
- Key
- Amwith no capo
- Tempo
- 116BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 76 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in While My Guitar Gently Weeps
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♩=116
Verse× 3 · ♩=116
Chorus (A major)♩=116
Outro♩=116
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play While My Guitar Gently Weeps
While My Guitar Gently Weeps is built on a descending bass line, not on chord movement. The verse is Am, Am/G, F, G, and Am/G is simply the Am shape with your ring finger dropped from the A string to the low E string, third fret — that single bass note falling from A to G is the sound of the song. Practise it as a bass exercise first: hold the Am chord down and move one finger, on the beat, with no strum at all. Then add the F and the G, and notice the verse ends on G and D rather than resolving, which is why it keeps circling back instead of closing.
The chorus is a straight transposition into A major, and it is a different world to play on guitar: A as an open shape, then the same chord as a barre at the fifth fret to reach the D, then open A again. This is the part that requires a barre, so get the A major barre clean before you try to play along — press with the side of your index finger near the fret, not in the middle of the fret space. The D at the end of the verse under “while my guitar gently weeps” is a full two bars in the recorded arrangement, so hold it rather than rushing to the next Am.
Play the verse at 80 BPM with one chord per bar and one deliberate downstroke per beat, and listen for the bass note on every change rather than the chord quality — if the walk-down reads clearly at that tempo, the rest of the song is tone and confidence. Keep the strum narrow, on the bottom four strings, and let the F ring into the G instead of cutting it off; the verse wants to blur slightly. Add the chorus only once the verse loop repeats clean, then push the whole thing toward 116. The outro is the same material with Am, G, A and D stacked together, so practise it as one four-bar pattern and finish on a held A with the low E string still ringing under it.
How to practise While My Guitar Gently Weeps
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
Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → Am/G (3-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
6 of the 7 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
A → D3×Am → Am/G3×Am → G3×Am/G → F3×
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
- AmIntro, Verse, Outro
- Am/GIntro, Verse
- GIntro, Verse, Outro
- Devery section
- FIntro, Verse, Outro
- CIntro, Outro
- AVerse, Chorus (A major), Outro
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 70 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 70 → 87 → 104 → 116 BPM. The recorded feel is around 116 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 104 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 While My Guitar Gently Weeps 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
Am Am/G G D F C A
6 of 7 stay open
Fret 1
Abm Abm* F# C# E B Ab
1 of 7 stay open
Fret 2
Gm Gm* F C Eb Bb G
2 of 7 stay open
Fret 3
F#m F#m* E B D A F#
3 of 7 stay open
Fret 4
Fm Fm* Eb Bb C# Ab F
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
Em Em* D A C G E
7 of 7 stay open
Fret 6
Ebm Ebm* C# Ab B F# Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
Dm Dm* C G Bb F D
5 of 7 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 While My Guitar Gently Weeps clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More advanced songs to learn after this one: Black Orpheus, My Funny Valentine, Wonderwall, Hotel California.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in While My Guitar Gently Weeps 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.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
4bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by F, 3×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.