Silent Night (chords, melody with tabs and guitar arrangement)

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Silent Night is a popular Christmas carol written by Franz Xaver Gruber. In this lesson, we’ll look cover the guitar chords for this song, sheet music for the melody including tabs and a finger style guitar arrangement.

Grab your guitar and let’s get started!

Silent Night – Get the PDFs

How to read the guitar chord charts

To clarify how to read the chord charts in the next section, the top horizontal line represents the high E string and the bottom horizontal line represents the low E string. The vertical lines separate each fret. The numbers in the blue dots tell you which fingers to use on the fretting hand.

For example, on the G Major chord, you use the:

2nd finger on the 6th string, 3rd fret
1st finger on the 5th string, 2nd fret
3rd finger on the 2nd string, 3rd fret
4th finger on the 1st string, 3rd fret
Circles represent open strings
On some other chords, X means to avoid the string

If needed, check out this link on how to read guitar notation symbols.

Silent Night guitar chords

The basic chords for Silent Night in the key of G Major are G Major, D Major, C Major, E minor, and A 7. You can click on the chords with links to learn different ways of playing that chord.

Try the following chords one at a time until you feel comfortable switching between them. These chords will be written above the melody in the next section.

Here are some other resources on chords:

Silent Night guitar tabs and chords

For the sheet music below, keep in mind that the chords and melody are meant to be played as separate parts. We’ll look at how to connect these parts later in the arrangement section of this lesson.

The numbers next to some notes on the top staff indicate which fingers to use on the fretting hand. You can refer to this simple guide to understanding music symbols if needed.

When playing the chords part, continue playing the same chord when switching to a measure that doesn’t show one. For example, you would play G Major for the first four measures.

By the way, you can get all the PDFs of this song below.

Silent Night – Get the PDFs

Silent Night Lyrics

Verse 1:
Silent night, holy night,
all is calm, all is bright
round yon virgin
mother and child.
Holy infant, so tender and mild,
sleep in heavenly peace,
sleep in heavenly peace.

Verse 2:
Silent night, holy night,
shepherds quake at the sight;
glories stream from heaven afar,
heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ the Savior is born,
Christ the Savior is born!

Verse 3:
Silent night, holy night,
Son of God, love’s pure light;
radiant beams from thy holy face
with the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.

Verse 4:
Silent night, holy night,
wondrous star, lend thy light;
with the angels let us sing,
Alleluia to our King;
Christ the Savior is born,
Christ the Savior is born!

Reference: Silent Night, Holy Night. HymnSite.com

Silent Night – guitar arrangement

In this section, we essentially put different parts together using a finger picking method of playing. If you’re not familiar with this technique, check out this lesson on how to finger pick on guitar.

Silent Night – Get the PDFs