How to Play Greensleeves on the Guitar

Learn how to play a chord melody arrangement of the traditional folk song Greensleeves!

This tutorial is an easy introduction to playing chord melodies, meaning that you have a melody line and the chords played simultaneously. It's a particularly good skill to develop - it's loads of fun! 

 

💡 If you're following my Beginner Guitar Course, Greensleves has the perfect chord melody to practice the Finger Rolling technique we've just learned. If you've missed that lesson, check it out! You'll get a much better understanding of the fingerstyle technique behind this song. 

 

Before we get stuck in and learn how to play Greensleeves on the acoustic guitar, I'd recommend printing out a copy of its tabs and making notes on things that you need to remember! You might want to explore different fingerings and that sort of thing! Just head over the Resources tab under this video, and off you go. :)

 

Greensleeves - Chords

We'll start off with an Am chord. You'll play just the third string, probably with your driving finger. Then, you'll play the middle four strings: thumb, one, two, and three.

 

💡 You'll probably use a roll there. If you don't know how to do a roll, just play the chords as a block. Check out my lesson on the Rolling Chords technique to learn more!

 

The following chords are all easy, open chord shapes - check out the video tutorial for the entire chord progression. But then, you'll encounter an F Chord! You've got a couple of options there:

• Play the regular F Barre Chord - just do it! It's actually a great song to work on your full F Barre Chord.
   

• Play an F Barre Chord Cheat. :) You'll use your thumb to play the bass note, but many of you will find that really difficult.

 

Check out the video lesson to explore both options with me and find out what works best for you. 

 

Learning to Play Greensleeves

When learning songs like Greensleeves, which require a certain concentration level to manage both hands, building up a mental picture of the song is the way to go! As you first start learning, having the chords and tabs right in front of you will help you learn faster, but you must lose staring at the page as soon as you possibly can!

Greensleeves isn't that hard of a piece to play on the acoustic guitar. And trust me: longer-term, it's much easier to play it from your memory than from a page! Get each chunk of the tune done, and just move on to the next one when you feel confident with the chunk you've just learned.

I'm sure you know the melody of Greensleeves right away - everyone seems to recognize this popular folk melody! I'm sure being familiar with the melody is already going to help you a big deal! Listen to it as many times as you need to have it solid in your musical mind.

I really hope you enjoy learning this tune aside from the technical benefit of practicing your Rolling Chords technique. :)

 

Next, we'll learn how to play any melody on the guitar! Ready? Let's Do It!