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


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!


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.

Silent Night guitar chords

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 guitar tabs and chords

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 guitar arrangement with tabs

To learn more about this style of playing, check out how to connect a melody and chords on guitar.

You can also learn more about how to harmonize a melody on guitar using 3rds and 6ths, which I incorporate in this arrangement.

Get the free guitar practice guide here!

Want to learn more songs? Check out the sheet music with guitar tabs resource on this site. Here are some popular song suggestions below.

All the best,
JG Music Lessons

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