{"id":147770,"date":"2025-06-13T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=147770"},"modified":"2025-06-23T15:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T22:31:08","slug":"campfire-songs-learn-to-play-oh-the-dreadful-wind-and-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/campfire-songs-learn-to-play-oh-the-dreadful-wind-and-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"Campfire Songs: Learn to Play \u201cOh, the Dreadful Wind and Rain\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Learn \u201cOh, the Dreadful Wind and Rain\u201d a Classic Murder Ballad with a Supernatural Twist\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9Ks-zui6Plk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh, the Dreadful Wind and Rain\u201d is a traditional folk ballad with roots tracing back to the mid-17th century. Like many songs passed down orally for generations before the era of recording, it has appeared under various titles, with small shifts in melody and lyrics. But the core story has remained\u2014and it\u2019s a dark one. Over the years, it\u2019s been memorably recorded by artists such as Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, each bringing their own spin to the ballad\u2019s eerie tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a classic murder ballad with a supernatural twist. Two sisters vie for the same man\u2019s affection. When he chooses one, the other, consumed by jealousy, drowns her sibling. A musician finds the body and crafts a fiddle from her bones and hair. Hauntingly, the instrument plays only one tune: \u201cOh, the Dreadful Wind and Rain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the centuries, the details have varied. The suitor might be a knight or a miller\u2019s son. The sisters are sometimes described as older and younger, or dark and fair. In some versions, the fiddle reveals the crime at the murderer\u2019s wedding. But the essential elements\u2014sororicide and a haunted instrument\u2014have endured, and that\u2019s just good music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The structure of the tune is a repeating ten-bar progression. We\u2019re playing it in the key of A major, using just a handful of easy, open-position chords. While bluegrass players often strum this with a flatpick, this arrangement takes a fingerstyle folk approach, with the thumb handling the down-stemmed bass notes and the index and middle fingers picking the melody and harmony above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The intro features a simple hammer-on figure (shown in notation) that also reappears between verses for added color. In bar 3, on the G chord, I hold the D note on the second string (third fret) to create a smooth voice-leading connection to the D chord that follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second half of the form (bars 5\u201310) begins with another A\u2013D move. But instead of the usual G\u2013D5\u2013A turnaround, I use an ascending sequence: Em\u2013D\/F#\u2013G\u2013A. By skipping the high E string and placing the F# in the bass, we get a subtle but distinctive rising bass line\u2014an easy way to add forward motion to an otherwise gentle, flowing progression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"755\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/AG353-OH-THE-DREADFUL-WIND-AND-RAIN-NOTATION.png?resize=755%2C1024&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-147773\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/AG353-OH-THE-DREADFUL-WIND-AND-RAIN-NOTATION.png?resize=755%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 755w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/AG353-OH-THE-DREADFUL-WIND-AND-RAIN-NOTATION.png?resize=369%2C500&amp;ssl=1 369w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/AG353-OH-THE-DREADFUL-WIND-AND-RAIN-NOTATION.png?resize=768%2C1041&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/AG353-OH-THE-DREADFUL-WIND-AND-RAIN-NOTATION.png?resize=221%2C300&amp;ssl=1 221w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/AG353-OH-THE-DREADFUL-WIND-AND-RAIN-NOTATION.png?w=1079&amp;ssl=1 1079w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 755px) 100vw, 755px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/store.acousticguitar.com\/products\/no-353-july-august-2025\" name=\"magazine\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 150px; height: 198px; margin: 0px 20px 10px 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/001_353_Cover-150px.jpg?w=1290&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Acoustic Guitar magazine cover for issue 350\"><\/a>\n<p style=\"font-family: sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 15px 0px;\">This article originally appeared in the <a href=\"https:\/\/store.acousticguitar.com\/products\/no-353-july-august-2025\">July\/August 2025<\/a> issue of <em>Acoustic Guitar<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Add a classic murder ballad to your repertoire with this fingerstyle take on a traditional folk song with roots tracing back to the mid-17th century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":146710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Add a classic murder ballad to your repertoire with this fingerstyle take on a traditional folk song with roots tracing back to the mid-17th century.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1658,2],"tags":[1968],"ppma_author":[1592],"class_list":["post-147770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-folk","category-lessons","tag-july-august-2025"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/dont-let-your-deal-go-down-maurice-tani.jpg?fit=900%2C506&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1592,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"maurice-tani","display_name":"Maurice Tani","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Maurice-Tani-holding-guitar.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Maurice-Tani-holding-guitar.jpg"},"author_category":"","user_url":"http:\/\/www.mauricetani.com\/","last_name":"Tani","first_name":"Maurice","job_title":"","description":"Maurice Tani is a veteran singer-songwriter and alt-country band leader based in California. "}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147770"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148096,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147770\/revisions\/148096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147770"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=147770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}