PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsFor He's a Jolly Good Fellow

guitar song · Strings

For He's a Jolly Good Fellow Guitar Tab

Composer
Traditional
Year
Key
G
Time
6/8
Tempo
132 BPM
Difficulty
Beginner · ★
First note
D5

For He's a Jolly Good Fellow 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 - - D - -

eBGDAEVerseG15G1616161412CG131212D7101010810GD7121210eBGDAEG1212121416C171717D7151715131210G1212eBGDAEBridgeD71010101212D71010GC1212121313G121210eBGDAERepriseG1212121012CG131212D7101010810GD7121210eBGDAEG1212121012C13151717D71517151314G12

Lyrics

Bar 1 — For he's a jolly good fellow

Bar 3 — for he's a jolly good fellow

Bar 5 — for he's a jolly good fellow

Bar 7 — which nobody can deny

Bar 9 — Which nobody can deny

Bar 11 — which nobody can deny

Bar 13 — For he's a jolly good fellow

Bar 15 — for he's a jolly good fellow

Bar 17 — for he's a jolly good fellow

Bar 19 — which nobody can deny

Trad. (Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre, 18th c.) — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

For He's a Jolly Good Fellow is in G and the tab opens on D5 — 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 132 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 79 notes across 21 bars, from G4 up to E5 in 6/8 time.

Also playable on

The same melody is graded across 6 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the For He's a Jolly Good Fellow cross-instrument hub.

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Soloist Guitar reads this six-string guitar tab in standard tuning under the notation and grades your take on-device, note by note — free on iPhone, no ads, no account.

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