Lullaby Guitar Lesson

About this lesson

With our guitar tutorial on Lullaby, you will learn these guitar skills: Open chords.

This guitar lesson will teach you how to play a very nice finger-picking version of Brahm’s Lullaby, which was the first cradle song ever written.

But more importantly, it'll teach you a song you can play to soothe a tired baby 😉

Its melody is most likely one of the most well-known melodies on Earth.

If you have a baby at home or are expecting, you’re in the right place. Hit play above and learn this song well, you’ll be playing it a lot.

If you want to sing along, here are the English lyrics:

Lullaby and good night,
With roses bedight,
With lilies o'er spread
Is baby's wee bed.
Lay thee down now and rest,
May thy slumber be blessed.

Lullaby and good night,
Thy mother's delight,
Bright angels beside
My darling abide.
They will guard thee at rest,
Thou shalt wake on my breast.

We’ll start the lesson by learning the chords you’ll be using in the song, there are 4 chords altogether.

Once you know the chords, we’ll head straight into the song. Since this is a fingerpicking song, we’ll be playing the bass notes of the respective chords with our thumb, and also play the melody line with the rest of our fingers (and sometimes our thumb as well).

We’ll have a detailed look at each measure of Lullaby, and I’ll also tell you the most efficient way to change from one chord to the other. This is especially important in fingerpicking songs where you play a melody line since you generally don’t hold down the entire chord.

Lullaby song details

The original Lullaby was written by the German Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) in 1868, titled "Wiegenlied: Guten Abend, gute Nacht". Brahms wrote the song on the occasion of the birth of the 2^nd son of his friend, Bertha Faber, with who Brahms had been in love with during their youth.

Skills you'll learn