The Little Drummer Boy - guitar tab and notes
“The Little Drummer Boy” is a well-known Christmas carol, it is also known as “Carol of the Drum”. The lyrics is written by Katherine Kennicott Davis.
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
The Little Drummer Boy guitar tab and notes (pdf)
Listen
The Little Drummer Boy instrumental guitar (mp3)
The Little Drummer Boy (full accompaniment)
"The Little Drummer Boy" for guitar with full accompaniment is found in Christmas songs arranged for guitar e-book.
The Little Drummer Boy (only melody)
"The Little Drummer Boy" tablature for guitar. This version doesn't include notes, se pdf versions above for notes.
Tips on how to learn this song
Notice the structure, which to some extent is AABBCC, meaning the bars 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6 has most resemblances with each other. The key is C major, but one exception is the B flat note in bar 15. What makes this melody relatively easy to learn is the fact that only two strings are involved (the song can be transposed to the higher strings, see the full accompaniment version above). One of the challenges is to vary the slow and faster tempo throughout the song.
The Little Drummer Boy (Drop D)
"The Little Drummer Boy" in Drop D tuning (DADGBE). Free download in pdf-file.
The Little Drummer Boy (Drop D)
Key, time, tuning and tempo
Information about "The Little Drummer Boy" considering musical key, time signature, tuning and bpm.
Key
The (tab) version of The Little Drummer Boy 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 120 for the presented version.