When You Say Nothing At All
by Keith Whitley
Guitar Ensemble - Digital Sheet Music

WHEN YOU SAY NOTHING AT ALL - GUITAR TRIO with OPTIONAL BASS PART
For Classical or Acoustic Guitar - sometimes it's erroneously listed here as Electric Guitar.

Derek Hasted writes "This lovely melody, first made famous by Alison Krauss, and more recently by Ronan Keating, makes a delightful concert piece for guitars.

My arrangement is based on Ronan Keating’s version, where the distinctive guitar accompaniment is a little different to Alison’s original. The music doesn’t have the slow fade-out of Keating’s piece - it’s not that easy for a guitar ensemble on stage to emulate that! Besides - the fade-out in Keating’s version is lots of repeated notes sung with different syllables - on the guitar it loses any sense of variety.

But this arrangement does have all the rest of the thematic material, including the strange but seldom noticed fact that verse two is one measure shorter than verse one. A lot of the vocal countermelodies are here too.

The optional fourth part is suitable for novice guitar, for bass or acoustic guitar or for pizzicato double bass, and is included in both treble and bass clefs. But this arrangement works fine with just three guitars too...

The key is the same as Keating’s version and includes the rather lovely key changes - both seem to go up slightly in pitch, yet the second key change actually returns back to the starting key.

I hope you enjoy performing this!"