A beginner-friendly guitar tutorial by Lauren Bateman teaching how to play “Silent Night” using simple tablature and only three fingers (no chords). The lesson explains tablature basics (string/fret numbering, open string = 0), walks through the song phrase-by-phrase using frets 0–3 across the G, D, B, and high E strings, and encourages viewers to access a PDF and a broader Christmas Classics course.
If you're an absolute beginner to guitar, then you're going to absolutely love this lesson. I'm going to show you how to play Silent Night with only three fingers, no chords. Let's get into it.
So before I get into how to play Silent Night, I just want to go over tablature, the music notation we're going to be using to play this song. It's a very easy way to play music on the guitar. We're going to be using fingers one, two, and three. So on this music, whenever you see the number one, okay, that represents the frets, these little blocks. So first fret, second fret, third fret. The entire song takes place in these first three frets. And when you see the number one, you're going to use the first finger. When you see the number two, you're going to use the second finger. And when you see the number three, you're going to use the third finger. And a little note I want to make on tablature, it's kind of opposite of what you think. Think. So there's going to be six lines, and each of those six lines represents one of your strings on the guitar. Now, the top string, you think it would be this top string of the guitar, but no, it's actually this high E string on the bottom side of the guitar. And then the lowest string on the tablatures is this fat string up here on the top side of your guitar. But don't worry, we're going to go through this step by step. And if you're interested in getting a PDF for this song or. Or any other of my Christmas classics, you can go check out my Christmas course. I'll put a link in the description below. All right, so if you look at our tab, we're starting on an open string zero. So when you see zero, that means you're not going to play anything on the string. You're just going to play that string, what we call open. Okay? So we're just going to hit the. You can pick all downs on this down on the open G string. Then we're going to take our second finger, okay, that number two, second finger. And we're going to put on the second fret on that G string. Okay? So our first two notes are open G. Second fret on the G string. Okay? And then lift that again. Okay, that's our first three notes.
Silent.
You can hear it already. And then the next measure, we're going to move this second finger up one string to the D string. And that's Our night. So so far we've got Silent Night. Okay. And the great thing about this song, we don't have to talk too much about rhythm. Hopefully you know the melody. So if you know the melody and sing the song, you can play the rhythm. So that was our first phrase. And the second phrase is going to be the exact same thing. So you're just going to repeat what you just did. So it's open G, second fret on G, open G, and then the second fret on the D string. Okay, so those are our first two phrases.
So silent night.
And then you repeat it again.
Holy night.
Now we're going to introduce our third finger on the B string, third fret. Okay? We're going to play that twice.
All is.
And then we're going to lift the finger up for an open B string.
Okay, all is.
Come.
Three, three open, all on the B string. And then we're going to put our first finger on the first fret of the B string. You're going to play that twice.
And then you're going to come up to the open G string again. Right? So if I just play those two phrases together, it's going to be all.
Is calm, all is bright.
So let's just play through what we've done so far. Okay, so we've got 1, 2, 3.
And what I love about Silent Night is it's a really slow song. There's no need to go fast. So it's a fantastic song for beginners. So, so the next kind of phrase that we're going to. And think of phrases as like sentences in music. We're going to go back to that G string on the second fret, and we're going to play that twice.
So that's round. Yawn.
Come down to the first fret on the B string, open B string, back up to the G string, second fret, and then open G string, second fret on the G string, open G string, and then up to the second fret on the D string. Okay, so if we put that all together, it's going to be.
Okay, a little bit quicker round your.
Virgin.
Mother and child.
So once you play through that phrase or sentence, you're just going to repeat the same thing again.
So it's, Holy infant, so tender and mild.
What happens next is we're gonna jump up to that B string again at the third fret. So after you play through that phrase the second time, we're gonna jump up to the B string with our third finger on the third fret. We're gonna play that twice and then we're gonna come to the high E string on the first fret and we're gonna play that once back to the B string twice, third fret, open B string and then first finger on the B string, open E. That's our next phrase. So it's.
And then our final phrase or the last sentence going to be the first finger on the first fret of the B string. Then we have an open G string, second fret on the D string, open G string, third fret on the D string, open D string and we end on the fifth string, third fret. So that last phrase. And I'm going to play through the whole thing for you guys, the last phrases.
Alright, so we're going to take this all the way from the top and we're going to play it through. Remember, it's a slow song so there's no need to rush, but if I am going fast, you can always use the settings cog to slow things down. One, two, three.
Sam.
If you'd love to learn more great beginner holiday classics just like this one, then I highly recommend you go check out my Christmas Classics course where I have lots of songs just like this tabbed out at the beginner level along with play along tracks at various tempos and speeds. So if you're interested in impressing family and friends this holiday season, click on the link in the description below and check out my Christmas Classics course.
