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guitar song · Strings

Bourrée in E minor Guitar Tab

Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach
Year
1712
Key
Em
Time
4/4
Tempo
116 BPM
Difficulty
Difficult · ★★★★★
First note
E4

Bourrée in E minor on guitar

The full melody, rendered as six-string guitar tab in standard tuning you can read on screen or print for the stand — free, and never truncated.

Tuning: E A D G B e (standard) · Strum: D - DU -

eBGDAEFirst strainEm02Em320402Am024031Em020402eBGDAEEm0204202Em320402Am024031eBGDAEB702040G000Second strainG321033Am003102eBGDAEAm120102D232G033003D550220eBGDAEB732030B7077E7970503Am203336eBGDAED7550220A74000B7577050eBGDAEAm709097B7679097Em7

J.S. Bach, Suite in E minor BWV 996 (c. 1712) — archival melody adapted for ukulele — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

Bourrée in E minor is in Em and the tab opens on E4 — find that fret, settle your hand there, and notice how little it has to move: the arrangement is worked out with a fret-hand position economy, so consecutive notes stay under your fingers instead of leaping up and down the neck. Read the numbers, not the note names: string line plus fret is the whole instruction, and an open string costs you nothing.

Play it well under around 116 BPM with a metronome and let each note ring into the next — the tails under the numbers show you how long. When your take review marks a bar, loop just that bar until the fret-hand shift inside it feels automatic, then rejoin the line. Speed is the last thing you add, never the first. By the numbers, this setting runs 129 notes across 25 bars, from D♯3 up to B4 in 4/4 time.

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