PlaysoloistStringsGuitarSongsThe Wild Rover
guitar song · Strings
The Wild Rover Guitar Tab
- Composer
- Traditional
- Year
- —
- Key
- C
- Time
- 3/4
- Tempo
- 126 BPM
- Difficulty
- Beginner · ★
- First note
- C4
The Wild Rover 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.
Lyrics
Bar 1 — I've been a wild rover for many's the year
Bar 6 — and I've spent all my money on whiskey and beer
Bar 11 — but now I'm returning with gold in great store
Bar 16 — and I never will play the wild rover no more
Bar 20 — And it's no, nay, never
Bar 25 — no, nay, never no more
Bar 28 — will I play the wild rover
Bar 32 — no, never, no more
Trad. Irish, 17th c. — public domain.
How to practise this on guitar
The Wild Rover is in C and the tab opens on C4 — 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 126 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 79 notes across 36 bars, from G3 up to G4 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 The Wild Rover cross-instrument hub.
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Play The Wild Rover — 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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