Hi all, I couldn’t believe how difficult this is, it seems such a simple thing to learn at first glance, the reality being somewhat different ! at least I know I’m not alone with this, must keep chipping away at it, hopefully it’ll get easier
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Happy Birthday recording for Grade 2 consolidation - SteveL
Here is my recording of Happy Birthday, done for my Grade 2 consolidation, 20 months after learning in this module. Since I haven’t played or practiced since then, I had to relearn and you can see my notes on learning the song again along with my annotated tab that uses many of the hints for approaching the song given in the discussion above.
Why is the counting on justin’s video and the give tab in description is different?
Simple good idea but I didn’t think of it
I’m just having a go at this now. It’s certainly taxing my brain!
Just a small point- Below is a screenshot from the Learn More page of the lesson. Should the F in the red box be moved to the right? The open B string isn’t a note in an F chord.
Hey @jacksprat , that B note is not in the C/E chord, either. The point is the melody notes don’t have to necessarily be in the chord, although they often are. In this tab, there are a couple of cases where they differ: the A note in bars 1 and 3.
Thanks for the reply @jjw. I understand that melody notes don’t have to come from the chords. But I think it would be less confusing if the F was placed above the start of the F chord notes. Since posting I’ve noticed that is how it’s annotated in the tab on the video. It seems to have migrated left on the tab in the notes. 
That’s a good point.
However, if I just strum the chords and sing (or imagine) the melody, it feels to me like the F chord change is on beat 1 of that bar (from the pdf tab above). If I continue with C/E (or just C) on that beat, it doesn’t sound right.
However, in terms of playing it fingerstyle, you definitely don’t want to change to the F chord on that beat, since you have to play the open B string. In that case, you put the F chord down on beat 2.