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.
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
Free on the App Store
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.
Get Guitar on the App Store