PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsDanny Boy

guitar song · Strings

Danny Boy Guitar Tab

Composer
Traditional
Year
1913
Key
C
Time
4/4
Tempo
72 BPM
Difficulty
Easy · ★★
First note
B3

Danny Boy 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

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Trad. Irish (Londonderry Air), words F. Weatherly 1913 — public domain. Melody is the traditional Irish air 'Londonderry Air' (public domain); teach/render the air only. F. Weatherly's 1913 lyric is also public domain (US pre-1929; life+70 expired 1999) but is not required for the melody lesson.

How to practise this on guitar

Danny Boy is in C and the tab opens on B3 — 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 72 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 90 notes across 17 bars, from A3 up to E5 in 4/4 time.

Also playable on

The same melody is graded across 8 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the Danny Boy cross-instrument hub.

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