Tag: guitar sheet music

Fingerstyle Guitar – Easy Songs in the Public Domain

This guitar ebook includes fingerstyle arrangements for Brahms Lullaby, Kumbaya, Ode To Joy, Sarabande, Can Can, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Frère Jacques and All Through The Night. There is also a selection of fingerpicking, bluegrass and chord strumming accompaniments for these pieces. Also includes simple melodies for the songs and warm up exercises.

Buy the ebook →

I have been playing guitar for a while now, but I didn’t start playing classical or fingerstyle until sometime after beginning with rock, pop, funk, reggae and metal styles. I have since started to fall for this style of guitar playing. It’s so relaxing and it’s a challenge and really interesting to explore what can be done. I am nowhere near being a good fingerstyle player, but I’ve been teaching beginners for 12 years and this experience makes it possible to put together an interesting selection of pieces for this book that is for beginner guitar and advanced beginners. The book can be used by teachers in their lessons. Self taught players can learn too, but they would need some prior knowledge of reading music and some basic beginners ability to play a few simple chords together, such as C, F, Am, E, G, G7, D and Dm..

In this book you will find a collection of public domain songs with unique fingerstyle arrangements. There is also a selection of fingerpicking, bluegrass and chord strumming accompaniments for the pieces. The patterns in these accompaniments are fairly basic ideas that can be used for many other songs. It is worth studying these and learning the fingerpicking patterns, how the bluegrass bass notes work and linking that with the off beat chord strums and also getting a grasp of the simple strumming rhythm with accents on beats 2 and 4 for Ode to Joy.

My aim for this book is to make it easy for people to find an collection of simple fingerstyle songs that doesn’t get too hard too quickly, and opens the door for learning harder or longer songs after confidence has been built up by playing songs that have been arranged to be fairly easy and inviting to play for the beginner or advanced beginner. Some of the fingerstyle arrangements would take some rehearsing for even more advanced players actually, to play them well, so it’s not just a book for beginner guitarists. Perhaps the player may be great at other things but not familiar with fingerstyle, so this might be a good entry.

This book of easy songs has been created by making new arrangements from public domain songs. Public domain songs are great for learning because the tunes are familiar and there are no copyright restrictions for performing or for creating arrangements of them. This book can be used by teachers and students, or by anyone learning on their own.

The fingerstyle arrangements are unique to this book and have been made by playing around with various combinations of melody, bass and notes from the chords until a good balance was reached between being fairly easy to play but also challenging and enjoyable/relaxing.

Whilst you may find other fingerstyle versions of these songs elsewhere, they won’t be the same as these. I have made them up and not followed anyone else’s so it would be almost impossible for them to be the same, because there are lots of combinations of bass notes (root notes, 3rds, 5ths) to go along with the melody, perhaps different bass line rhythms, and there are also some hammer ons, pull offs and slides in places. You can find many different melody transcriptions with the same melody presented in slightly different ways, but the beauty of fingerstyle playing is that you can be quite creative with the arrangements to make something fairly different and unique, even though these public domain songs have been played countless times before.

The style of the book should come across as a coherent body of work as it’s been arranged by one person. However, it’s good to explore other books written by other people too if you are interested in learning more fingerstyle playing, because other arrangers will add their own style to pieces too and you will learn different things from them. I hope this book will help you start or continue your journey into learning fingerstyle, or perhaps with finger picking or bluegrass guitar playing.

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In The Bleak Midwinter – Classical Guitar Tab and Video

Watch a video of me playing the piece In The Bleak Midwinter by Gustav Holst and download the free PDF of the sheet music.

I actually wasn’t aware this is a Christmas song until a student mentioned their friend was learning it for a school piece. I think I did recognise it when I started to play it, but now I definitely will remember the tune (even if I did play a couple of the melody rhythms wrong, looking back at the music!).

I haven’t been playing classical guitar for very long at all. I picked up this guitar second hand from my local music shop and I really enjoyed playing it in the shop without it really registering with me that it’s a proper classical guitar… it just felt nice and I connected with it so I bought it. So this performance is not going to be a lesson in how to play classical guitar, but I hope it will encourage you to go and learn the tab or sheet music for yourself, because it’s not too hard, even for someone that hasn’t learned much classical guitar.

PDF Sheet Music for In The Bleak Midwinter by Gustav Holst

6 Rock & Blues Play Along Backing Tracks [Premium]

Contents

6 Rock & Blues Play Along Backing Tracks (with full sheet music)

★ Over 30 PDF Files of Sheet Music ★ Over 60 MP3 Tracks ★ 6 Guitar Pro Files ★

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Listen to the 6 tracks here:

  1. Blues in A (Sun Shines Through The Window) – Play Along Track 1

Grade 3 Lead Guitar & Barre Chords
Grade 1 Guitar
Grade 1-2 Ukulele
Grade 3 Bass Guitar
Grade 1-2 Drums
Lyrics for the Verses

  1. Blues in E with swing – Play Along Track 2

Grade 3 Lead Guitar & Barre Chords
Grade 1-2 Guitar
Grade 1-2 Ukulele
Grade 3 Bass Guitar
Grade 1-2 Drums

  1. Slow Rock in A Minor – Play Along Track 3

Grade 3-6 Lead Guitar
Grade 2 Guitar
Grade 3 Guitar (Barre Chords)
Grade 2 Ukulele
Grade 4 Bass Guitar
Grade 1-3 Drums

  1. Alternative Rock in E Minor – Play Along Track 4

Grade 6 Lead Guitar
Grade 2-3 Guitar
Grade 2-3 Ukulele
Grade 3 Bass Guitar
Grade 3-4 Drums

  1. Indie Rock in C – Play Along Track 5

Grade 3-5 Lead Guitar
Grade 2 Guitar 1
Grade 2 Guitar 2
Grade 2 Ukulele
Grade 3-5 Bass Guitar
Grade 3-4 Drums
Grade 2 Easy Drums

  1. Funk Rock in A Minor – Play Along Track 6

Grade 5 Lead Guitar
Grade 2 Guitar
Grade 3 Guitar
Grade 2 Ukulele
Grade 5 Bass Guitar
Grade 6 Drums
Grade 2-3 Easy Drums

Written and self published in 2020 by Theo Lawrence / TL Music Lessons.

Introduction

When the UK went into lockdown in March 2020 due to Covid-19, I quickly moved many of my lessons onto Skype/Zoom online lessons. I decided to make some of my own songs for my students to play so that they had backing tracks to play along with when they had learned and practiced the songs. I wanted to make sure they were possible for them to play, whilst also being a challenge to learn them. By the end of June, I had written these 6 songs and they felt like they worked together as a set of pieces to share with the world.

My students are all at different levels. Many of my beginners pupils of primary school age have been having lessons for at least a year or several years, so I wrote the lowest ability parts at Grade 1-2, and sometimes elements of Grade 3. I also have some grade 4-6 pupils on Guitar, Drums and Bass, so I wanted to make parts for them too. With all those parts together, there is something for almost everyone in here – just not for complete beginners because they need to work on the basics before learning these pieces.

People that might find this book useful

  • Guitar, Ukulele, Bass and Drum teachers can use these resources in their teaching or for their student’s performances.
  • Guitar, Ukulele, Bass and Drum students can teach themselves to play the music if they are able to read the sheet music. The backing tracks can then be used to practice with.
  • The Backing Tracks could potentially be used for school performances, such as for GCSE (check with the music teacher at school for song choice suitability.

 

About the PDF Sheet Music

These are the overall ranges of grades that the instruments cover in this selection of 6 songs. There are separate PDF files for each instrument part.

Grade 3-6 Lead Guitar
Grade 1-2 Guitar
Grade 3 Guitar Barre Chords
Grade 1-3 Ukulele
Grade 3-5 Bass Guitar
Grade 3-6 Drums
Grade 1-3 Easy Drums

About the MP3 Audio Files and the Guitar Pro Files

There are at least 3 different speeds of backing tracks available for each song. With performances in mind (such as for school GCSE submissions, school performances, or Eisteddfod entries), I have also included mp3s for each song without Lead Guitar, without Drums and without Bass Guitar. There are also one or two extras in there, such as ‘Just the Ukulele Part’ for some songs where I felt they would be especially helpful. If you need backing tracks that aren’t in the download pack, I strongly suggest investing in a copy of Guitar Pro, because you can do so much with these files. You can make the pieces be any speed you want, you can edit the parts, you can change the sounds of the instruments, and you can make your own mp3s and pdf files with it. You can also turn on the metronome and loop sections.

Summary

During the last few months, I have noticed that my students that carried on with online lessons have seemed to progress more than usual. I’m not sure if it’s the extra time at home with less going on, or if it’s these songs with backing tracks. I’d like to think it’s a mixture of all of those things, and probably more. I can say for sure that these pieces have gone down well with all of my students and that the range of techniques and rhythms included in the songs have been beneficial for them. It’s also been a nice outlet for me – it’s been like songwriting again (I’ve had a substantial break from it), and even though I was purposely trying not to write things that were out of reach for my students to learn, I was also enjoying the creative flow, and at times really went for it. I got really into the lead parts and was quite creatively free with those mostly, and on the drum parts I added my own style and flair into them, especially on the last piece with adding in fast double strokes on the hi hats and fills.

I hope you enjoy learning / teaching with these pieces.

6 Rock and Blues Play Along Backing Tracks

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Theo Lawrence

www.tlmusiclessons.com

www.learndrumsforfree.com

www.payhip.com/tlmusiclessonsdrums

www.learnguitarforfree.com

www.payhip.com/tlmusiclessons

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‘Sun Shines Through The Window’ – Blues Play Along Track – Rhythm Guitar, Lead Guitar, Bass, Ukulele, Drums and Vocals

Listen to the track at 90bpm:

70bpm:

60bpm:

 

Download the MP3 file – Sun Shines Through The Window (Full Speed)

Download the Guitar Pro 7 file – Sun Shines Through The Window

LEAD GTR – Sun Shines Through The Window – PDF Sheet Music
RHYTHM GUITAR – Sun Shines Through The Window – PDF Sheet Music
UKULELE – Sun Shines Through The Window – PDF Sheet Music
BASS GUITAR – Sun Shines Through The Window – PDF Sheet Music
LYRICS – The sun shines through the window – TXT File

This song has been written as an educational piece for Drums, Guitar, Bass and Ukulele. I made it for my students to learn and I am sharing it online for everyone else too. I created the piece in Guitar Pro 7, which is a great way to learn and practice this because you can mute insruments and change the speed and even change parts if you like.

This blues song is played straight, without swing. There are drum beats and fills in the piece in keeping with the blue style. You could solo the drums and bass on it’s own to practice locking in with the bass – making sure the bass drum syncs up with the bass guitar when ever they are played together.

12 Bar Blues

The pattern of the 12 bar blues usually follows a pattern of chord changes. The pattern of bars where the main chord changes are is this: 4,2,2,1,1,1,1.

The pattern below is clearer. It uses roman numerals to show which chord in the diatonic chord sequence that is being used.:

I / / /

IV / I /

V IV I V

Lyrics

I wrote this song originally for just the instruments, but I thought it would be good to write some lyrics in case there are any singers out there that would like to sing along too. I have a rough idea of how it would go in my head, but I’m no singer, so you’re on your own!

VERSE 1

The sun shines through the window
And I’m stuck inside the house
It’s half past 1 in the afternoon,
And the day is going fast

I’m tryin to make things work
I’m tryin to make things rhyme,
But there’s harder times ahead,
And I’m running out of time.

I can’t see when this will end
All my plans are on their head
But the sun keeps shining through
Takin’ away those blues

VERSE 2

The sun shines through the window
And I’m stuck inside the house
It’s half past 2 in the afternoon,
And the day is going fast

I’m tryin to make things work
I’m tryin to make things rhyme,
But there’s harder times ahead,
And I’m running out of time.

I can’t see when this will end
All my plans are on their head
But the sun keeps shining through
Takin’ away those blues

VERSE 3

The sun shines through the window
And I’m stuck inside the house
It’s half past 3 in the afternoon,
And the day is going fast

I’m going to make things work
I’m going to make things rhyme,
But there’s harder times ahead,
And I’m running out of time.

I can’t see when this will end
All my plans are on their head
But the sun keeps shining through
Takin’ away those blues

About the lyrics

This song and it’s lyrics were written during the Covid-19 corona virus and it’s about having your job taken away and having to rebuild and adapt before you get into financial trouble. Many people will be in this situation with governments being very slow to offer financial support. I hope learning and playing this song can give some enjoyment to people in this strange time of crisis.

Send in videos of you playing this song

I will add your videos to this page if you record yourself playing it. Please get in contact.

Drums

Head over to learndrumsrforfree.com to get the files for the drums.

Premium Download: 6 Rock and Blues Play Along Backing Tracks

This song is featured in the Play Along Backing Tracks series with Blues and Rock pieces. You can purchase the sheet music and backing tracks here:

6 Rock and Blues Play Along Backing Tracks

Connection Between Guitar Fretboard And Piano Keyboard

  • How are guitar fretboard and piano keyboard related?
  • Will it be easier for guitarist learn piano notes or pianist learn guitar notes?

Today, our guest Neil from Sublimelody.com brings us a visual guide to answer two questions above.

Let’s get started.

1. Music Notes And Fret-Strings On The Guitar Fretboard

The diagram below shows you the connections between music notes and their corresponding string-frets on a standard classical guitar fretboard.

As you already know, we use the treble clef in guitar sheet music.

Each music note on the sheet music often has two or more corresponding string-frets on the guitar fretboard.

 

We call the string numbers by standard order. From the bottom to the top of the diagram above:

  • E (on the bottom) is the 6th string
  • A is the 5th string
  • D is the 4th string
  • G is the 3rd string
  • B is the 2nd string
  • E (on the top) is the 1st string

 

Let’s see how we can use the chart above to read music note and its corresponding string-frets:

Where is this note on the fretboard (G4)?

Look at the diagram above, we can see its positions on the fretboard are:

  • 5th string and 10th fret
  • 4th string and 5th fret
  • Open 3rd string

 

It’s not so hard, isn’t it?

Well, from a pianist point of view, it’s a bit complicated to learn guitar notes. Since to play the G4 note, we have 3 positions to choose from.

And each string is like a mini-piano-keyboard. Therefore, we have 6 keyboards!

Now, let’s move to the next section to see how music notes and piano keys are connected.

2. Music Notes And Keys On The Piano Keyboard

The diagram below shows you the connection between music notes and piano keys.

It may seem complicated at first, but if look closely, you will see that’s pretty simple.

 

From a guitarist point of view, a piano keyboard is just a string of a guitar. Each piano key is similar to a guitar fret.

The difference is the this “piano string” is much longer and presents wider pitch range than a guitar.

 

So, learning piano notes seems pretty easy for a guitarist.

 

Also, you may wonder what is the name of the clef below the treble clef. It’s the bass clef.

In piano, the left-hand plays notes on the bass clef and the right-hand plays notes on the treble clef.

 

If you want to learn more about reading piano notes and piano keys, and how to do sight-reading fast without memorizing a bunch of facts, click here to visit the visual guide from Sublimelody.

 

3. The Connection Between The Guitar Fretboard And The Piano Keyboard

Combine 2 diagrams above, and we have the following illustration:

Now, I guess you’ve got the point how music notes, piano keys, and guitar string-frets are connected.

 

And that’s it for my guide.

 

If you have any question about this guide, please visit sublimelody.com to get in contact.

Computer Games Music – PDF Ebook – Ukulele, Guitar, Bass Sheet Music with TAB

GUITAR: Get The Free PDF ebook Download →
UKULELE: Get The Free PDF ebook Download →
BASS GUITAR: Get The Free PDF ebook Download →

Also available for Drums

Full Ukulele Tab sheet music for 11 computer music songs. ‘Computer Games Music’ uses the MIDI from songs written by TL Music Lessons for teaching purposes using ‘Guitar Pro’ software. The MIDI is run through various synths in Abelton Live and the songs have been made faster. Drums and Bass Guitar have also been added to the original 10 Acoustic Guitar & Ukulele Songs.

Audio

In addition to this free sheet music download, the 11 track album ‘Computer Games Music’ by TL Music Lessons is available on Spotify, Bandcamp and other stores.

About the Sheet Music

Most of the pieces have 3 difficulty levels, so therefore there are 60 pages in the guitar book and 49 pages in the ukulele book ebook to accommodate all of the versions. The fast pace of the songs pushes up the difficulty level quite high in places. A slower, acoustic version of the songs can be found here. The bass ebook has 15 pages and there is only 1 difficulty level.

These could potentially be used as performance pieces in schools, or maybe even exams as a free choice piece if you ask an exam board. Feel completely free to use the audio as a backing track by downloading it from itunes or bandcamp etc and using it to play along with.

About The Music

Last year I made an album of 10 songs to teach with, and created 6 ebooks for the instrument parts. This year, I made an album of 11 songs called ‘Computer Game Music’.

This year I exported the MIDI files from 8 of those songs, plus 3 new ones, and began adding synths to the MIDI in my music production software Abelton Live 9 to create music that I think would sound good in computer games. I found it quite easy, quick and enjoyable to do when I initially messed about with one of the songs for fun. I then decided to start the project, which only took about a month of spare time to create the new album of songs. I also added drums and bass guitar to the tracks to finish them off.

The drums were created by me in Abelton using the MIDI piano roll and a drum rack. I really enjoyed this! I then transcribed the drum loops into actual drum sheet music for people to learn to play along with the music if they wanted to.

The drum sheet music has a wide range of ability levels from complete beginner (Canon in C), right up to grade 8 with some complicated syncopation at high speeds. All of the drum loops were created specifically for these songs. I tried to make the majority of the beats playable by a real drummer. I was able to transcribe and transpose most of the beats without altering them, but there were some that would need extra hands, such as the hand claps and clave polyrhythms, so these have been left out or modified where I thought appropriate.

Music makers and music producers can feel free to use the drum loops audio and midi as they wish. You may freely use them in your own compositions. School pupils may also use the drum loops pack as they wish for school projects or coursework, if this is within the guidelines of the work.

I hope that the songs can be used by a range of abilities. I would say most or all ability levels would find challenges throughout the album, depending on which instrument you look at. They are all quite challenging in places.

I hope that the songs can be used by more advanced players. Initially the previous album of music was created for grades 1-3 (guitar and ukulele only), but now for this new one, I would say most or all ability levels would find challenges throughout the album, depending on which instrument you look at. They are all quite challenging in places.
I also hope that the songs can be used as backing tracks for performances, for example in schools, and possibly as part of marked school performances or maybe even as free choice pieces in grade exams.

I also hope that my students will enjoy listening to the album after getting to know the songs in their different style.

Whilst the songs have not been created for any particular computer game, I will try to get some of the music featured in actual games. I think they would work well with platform and retro type games.

Autumn Leaves – A Ukulele and Guitar song for kids

Photo Credit: Travis Simon

Autumn Leaves is a Ukulele and Guitar song for kids about the colours of Autumn Leaves and falling from the tree.

The chords are easy for beginners and the words are easy to sing along. There is a basic notated melody, but you can make up your own to suit the singers.

The song is ideal for primary schools, from about year 1-5. You can listen to the audio example of a group of year 5 girls playing the song on guitar here:

GUITAR (EASY CHORDS)

UKULELE

GUITAR

(Premium) – 10 Acoustic Guitar & Ukulele Songs – Beginners to Intermediate – Audio & PDF Sheet Music Ebooks

***These are 10 original songs written by TL Music Lessons for teaching purposes, to get students using chords and melodies in real song scenarios, which have been written specifically for beginners from grade 1 to 3.***

Buy Now / Free Preview →

What’s in the download?

  • 10 audio tracks
  • 10 more audio tracks with count in (for playing along)
  • 3 x PDF sheet music ebooks for GUITAR (Level 1-3)
  • 3 x PDF sheet music ebooks for UKULELE (Level 1-3)
  • 10 ‘Guitar Pro’ master files containing all the music notation

About the 6 Individual Sheet Music ebooks

  • Guitar 1: Beginners Guitar focusing more on chords
  • Guitar 2: Advanced Beginners focusing more on melody
  • Guitar 3: Beginners to Intermediate focusing more on lead
  • Ukulele 1: Beginners Guitar focusing more on chords
  • Ukulele 2: Advanced Beginners focusing more on melody
  • Ukulele 3: Beginners to Intermediate focusing more on lead

Who is it for?

  • Grade 1-3 levels of guitar and ukulele
  • Guitar Teachers, Ukulele Teachers can print these for their students
  • Leaders of Guitar and/or Ukulele ensembles
  • Students looking to learn on their own

Audio (included in the premium download)

Useful Copyright Info: You are free to print copies of the sheet music for educational or performance purposes and you are also free to perform the songs in public.