Beginner Guitar Song
and Fiddle Song Too!
Boil'em Cabbage Down

Beginner guitar song Boil'em Cabbage Down makes a great beginning song for both fiddle players and flat-picking guitar players. This is one of the most easy guitar songs around for flatpicking. And for the fiddle, Part A is all on one string.

One neat thing about the first part of Boil'em Cabbage Down on the fiddle is that the melody stays all on one string -- perfect for beginning fiddle players. Even very young children, just learning their finger numbers, do well with this piece. The rhythm is all the same -- "blue-ber-ry, blue-ber-ry," is how we say it for my beginners. Or, "One-two, one, one, One-two, one, one," as we clap the half notes and quarter notes.

And for beginning guitar players, Boil'em Cabbage Down is a good first song to practice a Down, Down-Up movement of the pick. (With the chords, also, the Down, Down-Up pattern makes a nice strum.)



Download guitar and fiddle tabs for Boil'em Cabbage Down

This sheet is only half the melody, but since it uses 2 strings and employs a tricky rhythm, that is quite enough for a young guitar player. Given the slow (in appearance) rhythm I have set this song in (it really uses quarter and eighth notes, not the ponderous-appearing half and quarter notes), they will certainly want to stroke it all DOWN strokes (Down, Down-down), and at first that will be fine. But as they get able to play it faster and faster, you will want them to flatpick it with a Down, Down-Up stroke.


Violin only sheet music for Boil'em Cabbage Down

For beginning fiddlers, I like this simple sheet with only half the melody. It is clean, with no distractions, not even chord symbols. To be able to get all the way to the end of the page seems like a real accomplishment, and even that may be too much for a very young beginner. Save the full piece (see below) until after they can do part 1 smoothly, unless they are eager for the whole thing NOW.

Here is the full melody of Boil'em Cabbage Down, on two pages for guitar and fiddle.




Full melody for guitar free sheet music for Boil'em Cabbage Down

And here is the full melody for fiddle, on one page:

Free fiddle sheet music for Boil'em Cabbage Down, full melody with guitar chord symbols

As is common with traditional or folk sheet music, you can find many variations of the melody and words. The version I have here is like the one used by Brian Wicklund in his book Mel Bay American Fiddle Method, Vol. 1 (Book & CD). It is the first song in his very fine and useful book, which I use with my fiddle students. However, I start the young ones out reading this song with half notes and quarter notes, so they can count it. Most young fiddle and guitar players don't really understand eighth notes... they just feel them and learn rhythms by ear (listening over and over). Playing by ear is necessary, but not enough to make an independent musician.

Here's a fun group called the Duttons playing Boil'em Cabbage Down:

For my non-readers learning how to play fiddle, they can use the music like a map, as long as they know their alphabet and numbers. I have them choose different colored felt pens to circle or loop around note groups -- all the notes on the A string, for example, might have a pink circle around them, or a pink loop enclosing them all, or a pink line linking them together. The student chooses which color pen goes with which "string". Recently, one of my young students (perhaps fearing I was about to make a mess out of his music with blue, green, and pink pens) suggested tiny dots of color beneath each note, instead of big loops. Very dainty. And fast!

The words of this melody do not match the rhythm most commonly used by instrumentalists in Boil'em Cabbage Down! You'll catch on to this if you listen to groups perform it.

Basically, the words go like this:

Went up on the mountain
To give my horn a blow
Thought I heard my true love say
Yonder stands my beau.

Racoon and a possum
Running side by side
Racoon says to the possum
Won't you be my bride.

Boil'em cabbage down, boys,
Turn the hoecake brown
The only song that I can sing is
Boil'em cabbage down!

Brian Wicklund has more words in his book, Mel Bay American Fiddle Method, Vol. 1 (Book & CD).

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