PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsHabanera (Carmen)

guitar song · Strings

Habanera (Carmen) Guitar Tab

Composer
Georges Bizet
Year
1875
Key
Dm
Time
2/4
Tempo
62 BPM
Difficulty
Easy · ★★
First note
D5

Habanera (Carmen) 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

eBGDAEVerseDm10988Dm8766A755313A7Dm5810910eBGDAEDm10988Dm8766A755313Dm5303eBGDAERefrainDm1113A7553A71355Dm653Dm13

Georges Bizet, Carmen (1875) — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

Habanera (Carmen) is in Dm 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 62 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 51 notes across 13 bars, from D4 up to D5 in 2/4 time.

Also playable on

The same melody is graded across 6 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the Habanera (Carmen) cross-instrument hub.

Keep exploring

Free on the App Store

Play Habanera (Carmen) — and hear every note graded.

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.

Get Guitar on the App Store