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I Saw 3 Ships | acoustic​

An acoustic guitar lesson on how to play “I Saw 3 Ships”, a traditional folk song from the 17th century.

This is my own arrangement. Except for the intro and outro, it use travis picking throughout. Since the song is quite repetitive, I used a couple of key changes and different bass patterns to give it some variety and also brought in a kik drum and some sleigh bells here and there.

The intro and outro are in the traditional feel but when the travis picking comes in it's a different feel altogether. For the very ending, I sort of copped the ending of Mr. Blue Sky, it really winds it down nicely.

When I recorded this, it was raining heavily where I live. If you turn up the volume on the very end you can hear the rain!

It's a fairly complex arrangement so if you want to play it, it's probably going to take a bit of time to get the parts down. Like most travis picking songs, it can be like pulling teeth learning them, but once you have them down they actually seem easy, so you have to stick with it and push through.

I love the old traditional Christmas songs. Coming from a time long before the mass commercialism of music, they seem more pure to me.

I had a great time working this one out so I hope you get something from the video and enjoy playing this great Christmas song.

Merry Christmas everyone! Cheers
Andy

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