Product Description
1. Arranged for guitar.
2. Guitar TAB added.
3. Re-harmonized to be idiomatic for guitar and have more adventerous harmony.
4. Grace notes added.
5. The grace notes, uncommon harmony, and overly drenched G major pentatonic sound lead to a more Irish/Celtic/Scottish idiom, as if this was written for bag pipes.
6. Too many versions of public domain songs will just "phone in" the chords in my opinion with a I IV and V7. This version is a bit jazzed up, which may not be what you looking for. If you are looking for real basic accompianiment this isn't the version for you, though I do try to use as many open strings on the guitar as possible, and the chords are often small.
7. The other problem I often see with public domain songs is that the famous "cowboy" guitar chords most versions use lead to a lot of clunky part writing in my opinion (no thought of tendency tones, no thought of smooth voice leading, parralel 8ves and 5ths, doubled 3rds, etc). Those voicings are easier to sight-read, but are also not super creative, and as a teacher, I don't exactly want a student to see the same G Major voicing forever. That gives this false impression that that G major vocing is somehow superior.
8. Another small issue I see with public domain songs is that the vocal melody is sometimes not in the famous "cowboy" guitar chord. There is nothing wrong with that, and sometimes you want that, but since I like to train my singing with the help of my guitar, I like when arrangements make the vocal melody easy to add or remove on guitar. I can easily play a sophisticated solo version of this in a coffee shop, or I can just look at the chord nomenclature and see the song only from a rhythm section point of view when in a full band, when usually you purposely want to contribute less.
9. Notes with an upward stem represent those notes being the original melody. This give arrangement a lot of replay value because a skillfull performer can improvise the background harmonies.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.