Free fiddle sheet music Redhaired Boy with guitar tabs and chords. This popular Irish fiddle
tune will be a popular piece for your flatpicking guitar students or your beginning fiddle
players.
Here is a great-sounding group of kids playing this piece at UCLA:
Here's another fiddle version, from across the water, where they call it "Little Beggarman." The fiddler who placed this video on Youtube (Henry the Fiddler!) says,
"Famous Celtic fiddle tune. It is almost identical to the Americanized version under the
name Red Haired Boy." From www.htfiddler.net
Redhaired Boy is fun to flatpick in the key of G, and much easier than in the key of A. The
key of A is easier for fiddlers to finger, but for guitar, the key of G works nicely and
flows faster.
However, the key of G requires the use of the F chord! If you are having a couple of
students play this piece as a duet, one of them will have to be good at the F chord. (This
would be excellent motivation for working on that chord.)
Here's a red-haired young man playing Redhaired Boy. He's great!
Below is another version in G. This sheet music differs by only a couple of eighth notes,
but those extra eighth notes make Redhaired Boy a much fancier-sounding piece. Even more
fun, even more cute!
See Devil's Dream for a discussion of stroking Down and up. I tell my
students that a general principle to follow is to pick DOWN on the first of 2 eighth notes
and UP on the second eighth note. Plain quarter notes are DOWN. A quarter note followed by
2 eighth notes would be DOWN, DOWN-UP.
