Flatpicking Guitar Magazine

Email Newsletter Free Lesson - February 2017

“Maiden’s Prayer”

Arranged by Mickey Abraham

Download PDF | Download mp3

Hello and welcome once again to Flatpicking Guitar Magazine’s free lesson portion of our monthly newsletter. This month’s tune is a beautiful slow country melody called the “Maiden’s Prayer.” Although the song does have lyrics, “Maiden’s Prayer” is most often played as an instrumental fiddle tune. If you play it right it should elicit crying from the audience in a way that only an old country melody can.

When playing slower tunes like “Maiden’s Prayer” it is important to really let the melody notes ring and stand out. Since their are so few notes, each note becomes that much more significant to the feel of the tune. Notice how techniques like double stops, hammer-ons, and slides help bring the simple melody to life on the guitar.

“Maiden’s Prayer” sounds like a waltz but it is in fact in 4/4 time. The whole tune can be played with our favorite three chords G, C, and D. I like to add a G7 in measure 3 and I also tend to use D7 for all the D chords in the tune. The main “hook” of the tune is found in the last four measures where the chords switch from G to C quicker. The melody played over these quick changes really makes the tune shine. Make sure to click on the included lesson mp3 to hear the chords and melody in action.

I hope you enjoy working on this cool arrangement of “Maiden’s Prayer” and adding it to your list easy jam tunes. As always, should you have any questions or comments on this e-lesson just drop me a line at [email protected]