

This takes a bit of practice but it’s not as hard as it sounds. You’re still not out of the woods, though! You next need to make a bit of a leap to place your index finger on the second fret of the D string and to put your pinky on the fifth fret of the high E. Lift up your pinky and your index finger will have the two notes at the fifth fret (on the high E and G strings) that you need to close the measure. Use your middle finger to play the sixth fret of the A string and your pinky to get the seventh fret of the high E (first) string. Then stand your ring finger up on its tip on the seventh fret of the D string. “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was first sung at the Sunday school service on December 27, 1868. He had the church organist, Louis Redner, set the poem to music. His visit inspired him to write a poem for his Sunday School students at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia.

On Christmas Eve that year he rode on horseback through the fields around Bethlehem and attended the Church of the Nativity. In 1865, the year the Civil War ended and President Lincoln was assassinated, an American priest named Phillips Brooks traveled to Israel.

This will allow you to play the first two eighth notes and the following quarter note (where the B and G strings are played at the seventh fret). Use your index finger to barre the first five strings at the fifth fret and your ring finger to barre the first four strings at the seventh. The first two measures of Example 2 are the trickiest part of our song. But keeping your middle finger on the D string allows you to quickly move from pair to pair.īy the bye, you definitely want to finger a “normal” open position D chord at the start of the last measure in this example!Īs mentioned, playing this song in D is giving us a number of opportunities to use open strings, which in turn gives us a chance to reposition our fingers when the melody makes a bit of a leap to higher notes, as it does in the start of the second line: If your first inclination is to use your index and middle fingers for the pair of notes on the second fret of the B and D strings, then you’d find it more than a little awkward making any sort of smooth transition to the two subsequent pairs. The third measure demonstrates why this use of the middle finger as anchor can be so helpful.
#Town of bethlehem standard notes full
If you use your middle finger on the G or D string, that frees you up to use your ring finger whenever the high note is on the same fret and to use your index finger when the high note is one fret lower, as in the second pair of notes in the second full measure. In fact, you want to use your middle finger as a bit of an anchor during the most of the instances where you’re playing two notes at the same time. Even though the first set of notes is based on an open position D chord, it’s a good idea to fret the high E (first) string with your ring finger and the G string with your middle finger.
