PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsKumbaya

guitar song · Strings

Kumbaya Guitar Tab

Composer
Traditional
Year
Key
C
Time
3/4
Tempo
92 BPM
Difficulty
Beginner · ★
First note
C4

Kumbaya 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

eBGDAEC10CF33355C310CF33310G7C310eBGDAECF33355CF31CG701331C1

Lyrics

Bar 1 — Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah

Bar 3 — kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah

Bar 5 — kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah

Bar 7 — oh Lord, kum ba yah

Trad. African-American spiritual — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

Kumbaya is in C and the tab opens on C4 — 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 92 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 31 notes across 9 bars, from C4 up to A4 in 3/4 time.

Also playable on

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

Keep exploring

Free on the App Store

Play Kumbaya — 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