Good question. It's a problem I face with my students, to find a simple enough piece that contains the melody too, so one doesn't have to sing it. (Very few of my guitar students are singers, or want to be.)
Most alternating bass pieces are either song accompaniments (just chord patterns to be sung over), or are instrumentals too tricky for beginners.
One I use is Mississippi John Hurt's Pay Day. It's a song, but has the melody in the guitar part too. It's in open D, no chord shapes to worry about, just a major pentatonic melody on the top 2 strings. Even easier than Freight Train!
I have tab if you want it, but you could probably work it out just by playing along!
If that's TOO simple, then a more intermediate piece could be Windy and Warm:
A cute little instrumental in drop D - with some harmonics - is Bert Jansch's Tinker's Blues:
Very short, but easily extended with improvisation. I have tabs.
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Last edited by JonPR; 06-12-2019 at 04:11 AM.
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