“The Water Is Wide” is an old Scottish song, first published by the English folk song collector, scholar, and composer Cecil Sharp in the 1906 collection Folk Songs from Somerset. The tune was popularized in the United States after Pete Seeger recorded a version during the folk revival of the 1950s, and there have been a number of other great covers by the likes of Joan Baez, Eva Cassidy, and James Taylor.
I have long included “The Water Is Wide” as part of my solo fingerstyle set, usually in dropped D or DADGAD tuning. But for this arrangement, I wanted to do something a little different, so I chose Orkney (lowest note to highest: C G D G C D), in which strings 1 and 5 are tuned down a whole step from standard, string 6 is down two whole steps, and string 2 is up a half step.
I set out to make this interpretation simple and modern at the same time, keeping the fundamental harmony of the original, as it is already a complete and beautiful song. The arrangement is in the key of C major, and the second string, which is the tonic, lends a nice ringing sound throughout. I use the other open strings as much as possible to make good use of the rich resonances available in Orkney tuning—and to facilitate position shifts between phrases.
To add a bit of harmonic color, here and there I play a G#/Ab. In bars 2, 4, and elsewhere, this note makes a C augmented triad (C E G#), but when played with the note F it creates an F minor triad (F Ab C), and with G and F, it functions as the flatted ninth, implying a G7b9 (G B D F Ab) chord. To my ear, those little spices make the song a bit more profound.
I hope you like playing through this arrangement as much as I enjoyed creating it.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
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