Skip to My Lou - guitar tab, notes, chords and lyrics
“Skip to My Lou” was originally sung as a partner-stealing dance song. The word lou is not used so much nowadays, but my lou means in this context my love.
The music transcriptions of the song with tabs and notes are available for download as PDFs. It's free for personal use only.
Melody & full accompaniment
Free tabs and notes plus sound.
Download
Skip to My Lou guitar tab and notes (pdf)
Listen
Skip to My Lou instrumental guitar (mp3)
Skip to My Lou (full accompaniment)
"Skip to My Lou" for guitar with full accompaniment. Free download in pdf-file and audio.
Skip to My Lou guitar accompaniment
Skip to My Lou for flute
"Skip to My Lou" for flute in the key of C. Free download in pdf-file and audio.
Skip to My Lou flute
Skip to My Lou (only melody)
“Skip to My Lou” tablature notation for guitar presented as an image.
Tips on how to learn this song
The melody of “Skip to My Lou” as presented above is played exclusively on the two top strings, making it a rather undemanding song. In addition, the notes are often repeated for whole measure, or is played only once as a whole note, making it even more comfortable. The song has an ABAC structure. Notice that bars 1-4 and bars 9-12 is identical as well as bars 5-8 shares a lot with the A parts.
Lyrics and chords
Skip to My Lou chords in the key of C
Verse 1:
(C)Lost my partner
what'll I do?
(G7)Lost my partner what'll I do?
(C)Lost my partner what'll I do?
(G7)Skip to my lou, (C)my darling
Chorus:
(C)Skip, skip, skip to my Lou
(G7)Skip, skip, skip to my Lou
(C)Skip, skip, skip to my Lou
(G7)Skip to my Lou, my (C)darlin
Verse 2:
(C)Flies in the buttermilk, shoo, fly, shoo
(G7)Flies in the buttermilk, shoo, fly, shoo
(C)Flies in the buttermilk, shoo, fly, shoo
(G7)Skip to my lou, my (C)darling
The lyrics is clearly of the repeating kind. By the way, the second verse is just one of many versions for the song. Only two chords are utilized, which makes the progression very easy to remember.
There are possibilities to change to key by using a capo. These are the keys that the song would transpose in depending on which fret the capo is put:
- Capo 1: C# / Db
- Capo 2: D
- Capo 3: D# / Eb
- Capo 4: E
- Capo 5: F
Key, time, tuning and tempo
Information about "Skip to My Lou" considering musical key, time signature, tuning and bpm.
Key
The presented version of Skip to My Lou is played in the key of C.
Time signature
The song is played in 4/4 tempo (counted one, two, three, four for each measure).
Tuning
The song is normally played in standard tuning (EADGBE).
Tempo (BPM)
The tempo in beats per minute is 140 for the presented version.