Oh, Hush Thee, My Baby

Well, it's a little late for Christmas this year, but it took me longer to refine this song than I expected. This link will bring up two different versions.  There are no barre chords in either one, but that does not mean they are both “easy”.  The first one is beginner to intermediate level of difficulty.  It’s in the key of G, so there are no difficult chords, though there are hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides.  They sound cool, and are not hard to do. 

The second version is an exact transcription of the piano music published in the Children’s Songbook, transposed to the key of G, using the transposing engine found in the Church’s interactive music player at lds.org.  Unlike most piano pieces, this song is doesn’t sound bad as a guitar piece.  There are two musical “parts”, which on the piano are right hand and left hand, making it easy to keep them separate.  On the guitar, this does not work out quite so well.  I have italicized the “left hand” part, and specified “Drop D” tuning (lower the bass E string to D) to aid the guitarist, but it’s still not an easy piece to play.  Many of the necessary techniques are actually classical guitar techniques.  If you can play classical guitar, this is the one for you, but you won’t need my instructions.  If you are not a classical guitarist, I recommend my fingerstyle arrangement. It’s much easier, and frankly, I think it sounds better.

Please note that the chords called for in the tab are for finger position only, not for strumming. Perhaps the best example of this is the initial G7 chord.  Actually, the chord played is a G, since the #1 string is not played.  You could play it as a G-shape if you wanted to, but your fingers would not be in the right position to fret the following melody notes.  Putting your fingers in the G7 shape fixes the problem.  But if you strum the full G7 chord, it will sound wrong.  This piece is intended as an instrumental solo.  It would be hard to play in Eb major, as it is written in the Children’s Songbook.  You’d have to transpose it, which I did. 

You may also notice that most of the D7 chords include the open A string, a departure from the usual practice. Normally, the bass note of this chord is the open D string, and the A string is not used.  Technically, this chord should be called D7/A.  For simplicity, since all the D7 chords are played this way, and the only difference is the open A string, I have labeled them all D7, and show the change in the chord diagram at the end.  This does not matter in the second, harder version, as the Drop D tuning there makes the extreme bass D note available.  I had thought to include Drop D tuning in this version as well, but it seemed an unnecessary complication.

This song is not in the public domain. The copyright is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and is used by permission.  Please abide their use restrictions, and use this only for non-commercial, church or personal use.