PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsThe Itsy Bitsy Spider

guitar song · Strings

The Itsy Bitsy Spider Guitar Tab

Composer
Traditional
Year
1910
Key
C
Time
6/8
Tempo
138 BPM
Difficulty
Beginner · ★
First note
G3

The Itsy Bitsy Spider 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 - -

eBGDAE0C1113C000G73130C1C001eBGDAEC33G71013C0C113C00G73130eBGDAEC10C1113C000G73130C1

Lyrics

Bar 1 — The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout

Bar 6 — Down came the rain and washed the spider out

Bar 10 — Out came the sun and dried up all the rain

Bar 13 — And the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again

Trad. American, 1910 collection — public domain, simplified setting.

How to practise this on guitar

The Itsy Bitsy Spider is in C and the tab opens on G3 — 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 138 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 46 notes across 17 bars, from G3 up to G4 in 6/8 time.

Also playable on

The same melody is graded across 7 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the The Itsy Bitsy Spider cross-instrument hub.

Keep exploring

Free on the App Store

Play The Itsy Bitsy Spider — 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.

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