Our second christmas guitar duo is the well-known song “We Wish you a Merry Christmas”. It is a very simple arrangement for two guitars, but it maybe a bit more difficult than “Silent Night”, because it is a bit faster and has a so-called pick-up note. The tablatures however are easy to read and straight forward to play. We put the names of the chords above the tablatures for the background-guitar to improve readability for advanced players. The second guitar can be replaced by vocals if you prefer to sing the song with your family or friends.
As always, you can find the tablatures as well as some audio files in this post, so that you can start practicing directly. Remember, that there are only three weeks left till Christmas Eve ;o)
The Tablature
“We Wish You a Merry Christmas Tabs” have a simple structure. The background guitar strums the chords in s pattern which repeats every two bars. The second guitar plays the melody of the well-known vocals of the song. The tablature contains a pick-up bar with a pick-up note. This bar (It has the number 0 in the tablatures) Is played only the first time you play the song. When you repeat the song, You will go from bar 8 directly to bar 1. With the last repetition, the song ends in bar 8, but the second guitar does not play the last note.
# We Wish You a Merry Christmas # well-known christmas song # for two acoustic guitars # published by duochords.com # notation: # * = harmonic # h = hammer on # p = pull off # / = slide up # \ = slide down # () = optional # v = vibrato # : = break / hold # The tablature consists of # - Background chords # - melody # This is the order when playing it with two guitars: # guitar 1: Background # guitar 2: Melody # Pay attention to the pick-up note (in the zero bar) # The last note of the melody is only played when # repeating the song. The repetition starts with # bar 1 while the song itself starts with bar zero. ##################### BACKGROUND #################### 0 #-------------------------| #-------------------------| #-----:------------:------| #-----:------------:------| #-------------------------| #-------------------------| 1 G 2 C |--------3---3---3---3----|------------0-------0----| |--------3---3---3---3----|------------1-------1----| |--------0---0---0---0----|------------0-------0----| |--------0---0---0---0----|------------2-------2----| |--------2---2---2---2----|----3--------------------| |----3--------------------|-------------------------| 3 A 4 D |--------0---0---0---0----|------------3-------3----| |--------2---2---2---2----|------------2-------2----| |--------2---2---2---2----|------------3-------3----| |--------2---2---2---2----|----0-------0-------0----| |----0--------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| 5 B 6 Em |--------2---2---2---2----|------------0-------0----| |--------4---4---4---4----|------------0-------0----| |--------4---4---4---4----|------------0-------0----| |--------4---4---4---4----|------------2-------2----| |----2--------------------|------------2-------2----| |-------------------------|----0--------------------| 7 C D 8 G |-------------------2-----|----3--------------------# |-----1------1------3-----|----3--------------------# |-----0------0------2-----|----0--------------------# |-----2------2------0-----|----0--------------------# |-----3------3------------|----2--------------------# |-------------------------|----3--------------------# ##################### MELODY ####################### 0 #-------------------------| #--------------------3----| #-------------------------| #-------------------------| #-------------------------| #-------------------------| 1 2 |----3---3-----5--3--2----|----0-------0-------0----| |-------------------------|------------1------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| 3 4 |----5---5-----7--5--3----|----2-------2-------2----| |-------------------------|------------3------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| 5 6 |----7---7-----8--7--5----|----3-------0------------| |-------------------------|--------------------3-3--| |-------------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| |-------------------------|-------------------------| 7 8 |----0-------5------2-----|----3--------------------# |-------------------------|-------------------(3)---# |-------------------------|-------------------------# |-------------------------|-------------------------# |-------------------------|-------------------------# |-------------------------|-------------------------#
The First Guitar
As already mentioned, the first guitar is the background guitar. It strums the chords G-C-A-D-B-Em. The pattern is Base note and 4 strums, followed by Base note and two strums. This pattern repeats till the last two bars. You can easily recognize the pattern in the following audio file:
The Second Guitar
The second guitar plays the melody of the well-known singing voice. That does not mean that it has to replace the vocals. You can play it and sing the text additionally. If you want to play the song alone, you should use the background guitar tabs nevertheless. The second guitar has to pay attention at the pick-up bar and the last note of the song. It’s played depending on the repetitions in the song.
We hope that you enjoy this song as much as we did. We wish you a beautiful christmas season and a lot of fun while practicing these songs. Feel free to leave comments for suggestions or improvements of the tablatures.