Lauren Bateman teaches the melody of "The First Noel" on guitar using single-note tab, no chords needed. The lesson stays on the high three strings with simple fret patterns like 0, 2, and 3, then plays the full song so you can follow along.
If you're a beginner looking for some great Christmas songs to play this holiday season, but you haven't quite mastered chords yet, well then you are in luck because we're going to be doing the first Noel and it requires you knowing absolutely zero chords.
So this lesson is going to be a guitar tab lesson. It's a way of reading music without having to like get bogged down with boring sight reading. Okay, if you guys don't know, my name is Lauren Bateman and I help you make guitar make sense so that you can have fun. Just like I'm going to help you have fun with this song. Now, what you need to know on this tab is you're going to see the numbers 0, 1, 2 and 3. And all that's referring to are the numbers on the fretboard. Alright? Zero is an open string. You're not doing anything with your hand. One is the first fret, two is the second fret, three is the third fret. And this song is great because when you see the number one, I want you to use your first finger, your index finger. When you see the number two, want you to use your second finger. When you see the number three, I want you to use your third finger, which is your ring finger. Now this entire song takes place on the bottom E string, your thinnest string, the B string, which is your second string, and then your G string, which is your third string. Now the reason I love teaching songs like this to beginners is because we don't really have to talk about the rhythm too much because hopefully you instinctively know the rhythm because you know the melody of the song. Now the melody is just the part we sing along to in A. So. So we're just going to be playing single notes on our guitar. So this song starts on the B string with the open string. So we're not doing anything with our fretting hand. Alright, after that we're going to take our second finger and we're going to put it on the G string at the second fret and then we're going to lift up our second finger and we're going to play that G string again. So that's an open G string or zero. So we've got open B, second fret on G, open G. Okay? Then we're going to put our finger back down on G. Okay, at the second fret we're going to come down to the B string and we're going to go open 1, 3.
Okay, just like that. Open 1, 3. So so far we've Got.
Now we're going to come down to the E string and we're going to play open two, three, two, open. Okay, it's a nice little line.
And we're going to end that phrase with our third finger on the B string. So that entire first phrase is.
Alright, let's go on to our next phrase which is going to be that same open, 2, 3, 2, open on the bottom string. So we're repeating that same phrase.
And again back up to the third fret on the B string and then open 2, 3 on the first string.
Okay, now we're going to come up to the B string. Three, one, open. Okay, that's the end of that phrase. So let's do that again starting from the open 2, 3. So we have open 2, 3, 2.
Open 3, open 2, 3, 3, 1, open.
Now what we're going to do is everything we played so far, we're going to play it again. So we're going to start at the open B string. So we've got the first. No.
The angels did say was to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay.
So the third phrase starts very similar, but there's some different things that are going on here melodically. So we're gonna start on the open B. Come up to the second finger on the G, just like before. Open G. Second fret on the G. Now open 1, 3 on the B string again.
3, 2, open, open on the bottom string.
Okay, so we've got.
And now we're going up to the third fret on the B string. Okay, back to the high E string. 3, 2, open.
Third fret on the B string.
Open 2, 3 on the bottom E string.
And then 3, 1, open on the B string.
So this is what that third phrase is going to sound like. And then I'm going to play the whole thing for you so you can play along with me. So we've got.
So let's take it from the top. If I'm going too fast for you guys still, because you're just learning, that's perfectly fine. There's a settings cog down there. You can slow it down and make me play even slower so that you can keep up with me. Ready?
And the first Noel the angels did say Was to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay in fields where they lay Keeping their sheep On a cold winter's night that was so deep Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel Born is the king of Israel.
If you guys are looking for more easy Christmas songs to pick along to, go check out my Jingle bell lessons right over there.
