Red Haired Boy Guitar Tab

Playing the Traditional Folk Tune on Guitar

The Red Hair'd Boy is a traditional English folk song that has been around for centuries. It shows up in many different forms across the British Isles and eventually made its way to North America. You might know it from Steeleye Span's version or Fairport Convention's take, but the original melody exists in numerous folk collections. The song tells a story about a young woman forced into an unwanted marriage, so it carries a somewhat somber tone throughout. The standard tuning approach works fine for most players, though some prefer dropped D to give the lower strings a bit more resonance during the drone-like passages. The chord progression centers around G, C, D, and Em, with occasional visits to Am and D7 depending on the arrangement you're working with.

Red Haired Boy Guitar Tab

Here is a straightforward tab representation of the main melody line in standard tuning. This captures the opening verse melody that most arrangements are built around. e|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
B|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
G|-------------0---|-------------0---|-------------0---|-------------0---|
D|--------0--2---2-|--------0--2---2-|--------0--2---2-|--------0--2---2-|
A|-----0--2--------|-----0--2--------|-----0--2--------|-----0--2--------|
E|--0--3-----------|-----------------|--0--3-----------|-----------------| The chords for the accompaniment follow a relatively simple pattern. G goes to C, then D, back to G. The Em comes in on the second half of the phrase, creating that melancholy feel the song is known for. When you strum, use a steady alternating pattern. Down, up, down, up. Don't rush it.

I spent a lot of time trying to nail the fingerpicking version that Pentangle popularized, and the main problem I ran into was the bass note movement between verses. The thumb keeps a steady alternating bass on the fifth and fourth strings while the fingers handle the melody. This coordination takes real practice. What worked for me was isolating just the thumb pattern first, getting it completely automatic, then adding the finger picks one at a time. Trying to learn everything at once just slows you down significantly. The tricky part comes during the bridge section where the chord changes happen faster than the verse. You are going from G to Em to C to D in the space of about four bars, and if your barring hand isn't clean, it sounds muddy. I found that slowing the tempo to about sixty beats per minute and using a metronome helped enormously. Once my fingers memorized the shapes at slow speed, I could gradually increase the tempo without the chord changes becoming sloppy. For the vocal melody, stay close to the original mode. The song sits in Dorian mode, which gives it that distinct folk sound. The flattened sixth degree is what makes it sound different from a regular major key progression. If you play it purely in G major, it loses something essential. Keep that minor sixth flavor when you are singing or playing the lead line.

Several online tab sites have versions of this song, and the quality varies enormously. Some are accurate transcriptions while others have wrong chord voicings or misplaced notes that make no musical sense. I would recommend cross-referencing at least two sources before committing to learning from a single tab. The AllMusic and traditional folk music archives tend to be more reliable than user-generated content on random websites. If you want downloadable versions, MuseScore has several community contributions that you can download as PDF or MusicXML files. Some of them are well-transcribed, others not so much. Check the comments and ratings before trusting a particular arrangement. The traditional tune also appears in many guitar method books if you prefer a printed copy, and those are generally more carefully edited than anything you will find free on the internet. The song structure is typically verse-chorus based, with each verse following the same melodic contour. Once you learn the first verse, the rest of the song is essentially the same pattern repeated with different lyrics. This makes it relatively easy to pick up even if you are a beginner, though the fingerpicking arrangement requires more dedication to master properly.

One common mistake I see beginners make is playing the chords too openly with lots of string ringing. This folk song benefits from a slightly more compressed sound. Mute the strings you are not actively playing, especially with the fingerpicking style. Clean fretting hands go a long way here. A little muting with the palm of your picking hand keeps things from sounding cluttered.