PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsMy Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean

guitar song · Strings

My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean Guitar Tab

Composer
Traditional
Year
Key
C
Time
3/4
Tempo
126 BPM
Difficulty
Beginner · ★
First note
G3

My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean 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

eBGDAEVerseC0C031F312C02C20C031eBGDAED7101G3G730C031F312C02eBGDAEAm20D7231G7020C1C1ChorusC0C71F2eBGDAED731G000G7020C13C0C0C71F2eBGDAED731G000G7020C1C1

Trad. Scottish, 19th c. — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean 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 126 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 65 notes across 33 bars, from E3 up to E4 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 My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean cross-instrument hub.

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Play My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean — 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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