Silent Night - Fingerstyle Blues Guitar - With Free Tab

 

In this video, I want to share with you my fingerstyle guitar version of the classic Xmas carol Silent Night. The music was written in 1818 by Franz Gruber to lyrics written by Joseph Mohr. Since then it has been popular every Xmas and you will undoubtably hear it played many times this festive season.

The version I have given you in this video is in the key of D and is played on a guitar in Open D tuning. The music is in 3/4 time and it utilises an offset Travis picking pattern to compensate for the 3/4 time signature. I will discuss this below. I have tried to add a more laid back blues feel to the music.

The song basically is just one main section repeated throughout. In my version I have a 4 bar intro section, then the main section which runs for 23 bars. In my verison, the last few bars serve as an outro but you can just loop back to bar 5 and repeat as necessary.

Below are some tips to help you play this piece, and links to download the tab.

Silent Night Downloadable Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT

 

• 3/4 Time - The music is in 3/4 time which is uncommon for the music on my channel. That means there are three 1/4 notes in each bar, instead of the usual four which is seen in the more commonly used 4/4 time. As such, the bars are shorter and this can trip you up when playing. You don't realise how entrenched in 4/4 time your playing is, until you use a different time signature. When playing, each proceeding bar comes up quite quickly and it can be easy to lose time and place in the music, especially if you are used to 4/4 time. If you are struggling with this time signature, the best way to overcome this is to practise counting the music in 3/4 time. Maybe strip back the music to just the bass section and count the 1,2,3 bass notes in each bar until you get a feel for the 3/4 time.

• Bass Picking Pattern - The 3/4 time signature also causes issue with the bass picking pattern. The bass picking pattern I have used in this music is a loose travis picking pattern, which alternates between bass notes on different strings. However, this causes problems in 3/4 time as it puts the picking pattern out of sync each bar. Below is a previous video looking at this issue.  So in this piece of music the travis picking pattern is quite disjointed. Sometimes I will just play 2 bass notes in a bar on alternate strings, sometimes I will play the travis picking pattern repeating each bar, and sometimes I will just play two bass notes on the same string. As such, the bass note pattern is quite irregular and it can be easy to miss bass notes or play them on the wrong string. Try and practise the piece to get the correct bass notes played. However, if you are finding this difficult, just play all the bass notes on the lowest string of the guitar. The music only uses 3 chords D, G and A, and using barres (as is shown in the music) the bass notes for these three chords can all be played on the lowest string.

 

• Triplet Feel / Split Triplets - The music employs a triplet feel to the 1/8th notes. This is common in blues music and it means the 1/8th notes are not of equal duration and are played as a split triplet instead. Below is a previous video explaining this. This adds another layer of complexity to the music as most people are used to hearing Silent Night played without this triplet feel, therefore you instinctively want to play it as you have heard it so many times. However, I wanted this version to be slightly different and have a more laid back, blues feel, so I added the triplet feel. You really just have to listen through it and practise it to get the hang of where to play these notes. You could try playing it without the triplet feel applied but this may require shunting some of the melody notes around until they sound right. To add to this problem, in the 2nd last bar of music in the outro, I drop this triplet feel and play the notes without it. This bar (bar 27) can be played as you see fit. The music slows at this point and this ar has quite an impromtu free time feel to it. As such, just play the notes how you prefer.

 

This is about all I need to say about this piece. If you're comfortable playing travis picking fingerstyle guitar, it should be relatively straightforward to learn. You may get caught out slightly with the uneven bass picking pattern due to the 3/4 time but I'm sure with enough practise you should be able to get this.

Thanks for Reading,
Neil