Wayfaring Stranger

The muted stroke is doing the work

Use D-DU-xU-DU: the third stroke is a mute. Without it this hymn turns into a slow four-square strum and sounds like a campfire sing-along instead of a lament. The mute lands on the "and" of beat two, exactly where the melody has a gap.

The chord vocabulary of a minor hymn

Am, C, Dm and E7 — this is the minor-key companion to the C-F-G7 set, and it unlocks dozens of folk hymns. The movement that matters is Dm to E7 at the end of each line: the bass walks up D to E while the melody sits on C sharp, then falls to A. Play that pair slowly, twenty times, as an exercise.

• Am (2000) — one finger, open and wide.
• Dm (2210) — three fingers in a straight diagonal, index on the E string's first fret.
• E7 (1202) — pinky stretch; the hardest shape in the set.

Singing it without over-emoting

This is the most-recorded American folk hymn after Amazing Grace, and most of the bad versions share one fault: they get louder at the chorus. Do the opposite. Keep the verse at a conversational level and let the chorus stay soft, with a small lift only on "Jordan". The words are already dramatic; the melody does not need help.