Christmas Solos Beginning/Intermediate Package

Lessons

• Lesson 1: Silent Night - Slide Guitar in Open G

  Silent Night is one of the most recognized Christmas songs of all time. This arrangement is based, or at least inspired by John Fahey's version on his first Christmas album, The New Possibility.

  The Open G Tuning makes for lots of open notes and full barres with the slide, meaning not too difficult. But playing with a slide and getting good tone, intonation, and embellishments can be a whole different story.

  The lesson includes many tips on using the slide but patience will be required and rewarded for those who tackle this.

• Lesson 2: O Christmas Tree - Solo Fingerstyle Arrangement

  This is a relatively basic arrangement of the traditional carol, O Christmas Tree.
  
  The melody dates back to the 17th century and is simply a sixteen measure progression following the A-A-B-A form. It is in 3/4 time and played with a swing feel.
  
  I have added a little jazzy intro and outro and the lesson includes a bit on extending it with your own variations.
  
  There are quite a few barre chords and being able to roll or arpeggiate full chords will help create a very nice feel.

• Lesson 3: Away In A Manger - Solo Fingerstyle Arrangement by Doug Young

  In this lesson, we’ll learn a fingerstyle arrangement in standard tuning of one of the two melodies used for the Christmas tune Away In A Manger. We’ll learn how to take a simple, easy-to-read, or easy-to-memorize arrangement and enhance it on the fly into a more sophisticated-sounding piece. This approach is great for tunes you only play during certain times of the year.

• Lesson 4: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - Solo Fingerstyle Arrangement

  Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer is every child’s favorite Christmas song. After playing this for many years with children I thought it was about time to put together a simple fingerpicking arrangement.

  Once I fell into the key of A for it, there was a good way to incorporate a challenging skill for most guitar players. There are just a few chord shapes in this version so the left hand is pretty basic.

  The right hand becomes the issue as I brought in a Chet Atkins style bass pattern (3 strings alternating) with a harp like style of melody notes crossing strings, meaning many times the highest note of a melodic sequence is not on the highest string.

  This can amount to a bit of confusion for the right hand.

• Lesson 5: Jingle Bells - Solo Fingerstyle Arrangement

  This lesson on a fingerstyle version of Jingle Bells walks the student through some of the steps you need to take to create an instrumental arrangement.
  
  It is important to have a clear idea of the progression and the melody, then to start with a skeleton version, putting the bass notes and melody together as simply as possible, before adding some syncopation and harmony/filler notes.

• Lesson 6: Silver Bells - Solo Guitar Arrangement

  Silver Bells was written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans for a movie, The Lemon Drop Kid starring Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell. Bing Crosby and Carol Richards recorded and released it before the movie came out in 1951. The song went on to be a much bigger hit than the movie.

  This arrangement is not too difficult but does have a different feel than many other Holiday lessons here. It is in 3/4 time and played with a swing feel. It also includes an extended intro and outro to help set the mood.