PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsOde to Joy

guitar song · Strings

Ode to Joy Guitar Tab

Composer
Ludwig van Beethoven
Year
1824
Key
C
Time
4/4
Tempo
112 BPM
Difficulty
Beginner · ★
First note
E4

Ode to Joy 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

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Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 (1824) — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

Ode to Joy is in C and the tab opens on E4 — 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 112 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 62 notes across 16 bars, from G3 up to G4 in 4/4 time.

Also playable on

The same melody is graded across 10 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the Ode to Joy cross-instrument hub.

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Free on the App Store

Play Ode to Joy — 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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