PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsSimple Gifts

guitar song · Strings

Simple Gifts Guitar Tab

Composer
Joseph Brackett
Year
1848
Key
C
Time
4/4
Tempo
96 BPM
Difficulty
Easy · ★★
First note
G3

Simple Gifts 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 - U

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Joseph Brackett, Shaker hymn (1848) — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

Simple Gifts 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 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 42 notes across 9 bars, from G3 up to A4 in 4/4 time.

Also playable on

The same melody is graded across 9 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the Simple Gifts cross-instrument hub.

Keep exploring

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Play Simple Gifts — 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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