PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsThe Star-Spangled Banner

guitar song · Strings

The Star-Spangled Banner Guitar Tab

Composer
John Stafford Smith
Year
1814
Key
G
Time
3/4
Tempo
96 BPM
Difficulty
Intermediate · ★★★
First note
D4

The Star-Spangled Banner 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

eBGDAEG30G003G375GA7306D7777G753eBGDAED7202G333G0030G003G375eBGDAEGA7306D7777G753D7202G333eBGDAEG0077G7810G1087D7578D7888eBGDAEG753D7202GA7302D7333G3332eBGDAEC000D758753GD73233G3578G10810eBGDAEGD7121314G12

John Stafford Smith; words Francis Scott Key, 1814 — public domain.

How to practise this on guitar

The Star-Spangled Banner is in G and the tab opens on D4 — 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 103 notes across 33 bars, from G3 up to D5 in 3/4 time.

Also playable on

The same melody is graded across 5 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the The Star-Spangled Banner cross-instrument hub.

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Play The Star-Spangled Banner — 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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