Wabash Cannonball
Beginner Guitar Song

Wabash Cannonball is fun to sing and play for beginner guitar players!

This printable free kids sheet music comes with guitar tabs, chords, standard notation,and the lyrics to Wabash Cannonball.

Wabash Cannonball with guitar tabs

Please scroll down the page for the download links.

A really fun video of The Duttons performing The Wabash Cannonball:

Use these easy chords to learn a picking pattern

Lately I've been using the chords of this beginner guitar song to teach my students how to use the Travis picking pattern in a song.

See this great book, The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking: How to Play the Alternating Bass Fingerpicking Style (Bk & CD) , to learn more about this very popular finger-picking style.

It's easy to put a walking bass going from the G chord up to the C chord. 

Use the pinky finger? Or shift position

Because this melody uses "f#" (f sharp, the 4th fret on the D string), you may be afraid that your students will tend to use incorrect fingering.  Beginners do not like to use the pinky finger!

But hunt through the melody, and you will see that if your student shifts up to second position (placing fingers up one fret from the nut), then they will be able to play this melody with just the first 3 fingers.

This is an important concept to understand... and it is what they will WANT to do in any case (most beginning guitar players have one favorite finger that they would like to use for EVERY note, sliding up and down the neck!).  So talk about what is happening. 

free kids sheet music Wabash Cannonball

I would probably teach this piece BY ROTE, phrase by phrase, then haul out the sheet music and encourage your student to make their way through the tabs, relating their memorized rote playing to the easy guitar tabs.

Hope you enjoy this free kids sheet music!




The guitar tab link:



Download beginner guitar song Wabash Cannonball for guitar 


Dianna:
Your website is a light in the darkness. THANK YOU for all you do in helping to spread the love of music. It matters!

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About the Author

Dana Thynes

Hi, I'm Dana!  (Say that like "Anna".)  I'm the owner of Music-for-Music-Teachers.com, and a newer site, SingTheBibleStory.com.

Like some of you, I've been playing the piano since early childhood, and have added a few other instruments along the way, plus an interest in arranging and composing music.

You can find out more about me and the reason for this website at my About Me page.