Winter: My Original Fingerstyle Guitar Piece About the Beauty of the Seasons
In the beginning of 2020 I moved into a new place in nature, after having lived in a big city for several years. I never expected how much that change would affect me. Seeing the seasons shift so clearly, so visibly, brought a kind of quiet joy I hadn't felt in a long time. And it was winter that struck me first: the softness of freshly fallen snow, the creak of footsteps through it, the particular silence that settles over everything when the world turns white.
That feeling became Winter, a fingerstyle guitar piece I released on my album Atlas in 2022.
Watch the performance
Here is a performance video of the piece:
Listen through once before you open the score. Pay attention to how the strummed sections feel different from the fingerpicked passages, and notice how the piece ends: not with a definitive stop, but with a gradual fade, like snow slowly settling.
What the piece is about
Winter is built around contrast. There are moments of delicacy, single melody lines that feel almost tentative, like a first footstep into fresh snow. And then there are fuller, strummed passages that feel broader and more grounded. The piece moves between these two worlds throughout, and that movement is really the heart of it.
The ending reflects the imagery too. The final section is marked "play 6x and fade out," which means there is no clean conclusion. The music just gradually dissolves, the way a winter afternoon dissolves into dusk without you quite noticing when the light changed.
What the score contains
The score is 5 pages, written in G major with a capo on the 7th fret. It is presented in both standard notation and tablature. A note on the tab: the numbers are written in relation to the capo, so fret 0 means the open string at the capo position. The notation is written as if there is no capo, showing the concert pitch. Both systems are clearly marked at the top of the score so you can orient yourself quickly.
What you will work on
Winter suits intermediate players who want to develop their fingerstyle vocabulary, particularly around combining different textures within a single piece. It is not technically brutal, but it asks for real musical sensitivity.
Mixing strumming and fingerpicking. Several sections use index finger strums rather than full chord strums, with a note in the score to focus on the written melody notes within the strum. This is a technique that takes some coordination to get right: you are strumming but also highlighting specific notes within the chord. Once it clicks, it adds enormous warmth and motion to a piece.
Right-hand finger independence. The fingerpicking sections use a mix of p, i, m, and a fingers in combinations that are not always the most obvious. The score includes right-hand fingering indications throughout, so you can learn the patterns exactly as I play them, or use them as a starting point and adapt where needed.
Thumb fretting. There is one passage marked with a t above the note, indicating the left-hand thumb frets a bass note. This is a technique borrowed from players like Jimi Hendrix and used occasionally in fingerstyle guitar to free up the other fingers for melody or chord shapes. If your hand size makes it difficult, there is usually a workaround, but I encourage you to try the thumb approach first.
Harmonics and open strings. Toward the end of the piece, natural harmonics at the 12th fret appear alongside open strings, creating a shimmering, bell-like texture. These are not technically difficult harmonics, but placing them musically, with the right timing and dynamic, is what makes them work.
The fade-out ending. Knowing how to fade a piece out gracefully is its own skill. The final section repeats six times with a gradual diminuendo. Practice playing the same passage at different dynamic levels so you can control the fade smoothly rather than just stopping suddenly when you run out of volume.
Get the score
The full score for Winter, including notation, tablature, and right-hand fingering indications, is available for download in my shop for €9.99:
Buy the Winter score, €9.99 → karlijnlangendijk.com/products/winter
It is an instant PDF download, so you can start playing the same day.
On moving to nature and finding your sound
I think the pieces that come most naturally are the ones where you are not trying to write something. Winter arrived because I was paying attention to where I was, not because I sat down with a plan. The snow, the silence, the slowness of that season: they were already music. I just found a way to put them on the guitar.
If you are working on this piece and have questions about any of the technique, feel free to leave me a message And if you enjoy it, my album Atlas, where Winter was first released, is available on all streaming platforms and on my website.
Winter is available as an instant PDF download for €9.99 at karlijnlangendijk.com/products/winter. The piece was originally released on the album Atlas in 2022.
