Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - Solo Fingerstyle Arrangementby Neil Hogan

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer is every child’s favorite Christmas song. After playing this for many years with children I thought it was about time to put together a simple fingerpicking arrangement.

Once I fell into the key of A for it, there was a good way to incorporate a challenging skill for most guitar players. There are just a few chord shapes in this version so the left hand is pretty basic.

The right hand becomes the issue as I brought in a Chet Atkins style bass pattern (3 strings alternating) with a harp like style of melody notes crossing strings, meaning many times the highest note of a melodic sequence is not on the highest string.

This can amount to a bit of confusion for the right hand.