PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsStar of the County Down

guitar song · Strings

Star of the County Down Guitar Tab

Composer
Traditional
Year
Key
Am
Time
4/4
Tempo
108 BPM
Difficulty
Easy · ★★
First note
E3

Star of the County Down 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 - DU

eBGDAEVerseAm20Am22202CG11313Am03122eBGDAEG020Am22202CG11313AmG03120eBGDAEAm201ChorusC30031G33313Am03122eBGDAEG020Am22202CG11313AmG03120Am2

Lyrics

Bar 1 — Near to Banbridge town in the County Down

Bar 4 — one morning in July

Bar 6 — down a boreen green came a sweet colleen

Bar 8 — and she smiled as she passed me by

Bar 10 — Oh from Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay

Bar 12 — and from Galway to Dublin town

Bar 14 — no maid I've seen like the sweet colleen

Bar 16 — that I met in the County Down

Trad. Irish air — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

Star of the County Down is in Am and the tab opens on E3 — 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 108 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 72 notes across 17 bars, from E3 up to G4 in 4/4 time.

Also playable on

The same melody is graded across 6 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the Star of the County Down cross-instrument hub.

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Play Star of the County Down — 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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