PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsSanta Lucia

guitar song · Strings

Santa Lucia Guitar Tab

Composer
Traditional
Year
1849
Key
C
Time
3/4
Tempo
96 BPM
Difficulty
Beginner · ★
First note
G4

Santa Lucia 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

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Lyrics

Bar 1 — Sul mare luccica l'astro d'argento

Bar 5 — placida è l'onda, prospero è il vento

Bar 9 — Venite all'agile barchetta mia

Bar 13 — Santa Lucia! Santa Lucia!

Trad. Neapolitan barcarolle (publ. Cottrau, 1849) — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

Santa Lucia is in C and the tab opens on G4 — 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 96 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 49 notes across 16 bars, from D4 up to E5 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 Santa Lucia cross-instrument hub.

Keep exploring

Free on the App Store

Play Santa Lucia — 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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