I have to be honest: Christmas songs are -by default- cliché, sweeter then honey and more commercially-loaded then all the christmas-sales they provide with their ofter predictable, inspiration-lacking words and melodies.

I love ’em.

Most of them not for music’s sake though. Almost any musician is disgusted with them, mainly for the above mentioned reasons. It’s not ‘music from the heart’. F*** that.
It’s true, most of the times, but still… I love em.

Just as I despise the fact that Christmas itself is nothing more than a commercial viral outbreak of ‘buy, buy, buy or you’ll die’, I do love Christmas itself, too.

So many good old memories, nostalgia, warmth and on top of that: I finally get to see many of my ‘not-to-many-visits-again-this-year’ family members again. Of course I also get to practice one of my other big hobbies: we eat. 😀

Also, every year I get asked to get behind the piano and we all sing. Not only christmas songs (not everyone in my family is as big a fan of the tunes as I am), but the occasional one does drive the Christmas-spirit up.

So, since it’s that jolly time of the year again, I thought I’d give you guys the opportunity to surprise -and hopefully entertain- your family, with a tune that I think you all might also benefit from learning.

Since it has some nice sophisticated chords and chord-progression, some chord extensions, is not too difficult to play ‘single-note’ / ‘chord-breaking’ – wise, but does involve some puzzling around with nice voicings, it’s probably a real good exercise for most of you.
It’s also a song that (although also sweet as honey) I kinda like. For the most part. (I left the part that I don’t like, out of the tutorial video. Shame on me. But hey, it’s Christmas! ;)).

Since -as you all probably know by now-, I talk in my tutorial video’s nowadays (please let me know, in the comments below, if you are happy with me doing this, or if you’d rather have me shut up again), guiding you through the process with my vocal explanation, I’m not gonna write too much down, since there is not much more to add, except for these minor remarks:

• The whole song is played ‘looping’ (repeating) the two parts in the video, except for the “choir of children sing their song, ding dong ding dong, doodoop,doodoop”-part, where the harmony is actually also ‘B’ most of the time, but some melodic phrases are played by the synthesiser: Try playing an Emaj7 chord in root position broken into single notes from top to bottom and you’ll be fine (keep the ‘b’ in the bass)).
  Part one of the tutorial video is the verse (“the spirits up…”), part two is the chorus (“simply, having, a wonderful christmas time”).
• I refer to the second chord as a G#m/B, for the sake of speeding-up the learning-process, easing up the remembering-process and keeping the tutorial short.
  Officially this chord is a B6 (as is indicated in the pictures), but explaining about substituting the 5th for the 6th, showing this and getting into theoretical detail that will probably be hard to remember for most of you, I thought would be better written then said. So here you have it: Officially that chord is called a B6, as the g-sharp -the 6th note from the scale of ‘B’- is added to the regular B chord. As followers of the course have learned in chapter 2.8.2, the 5th is a note that can be easily left out of your voicing, especially when adding extension notes (such as the 6th, like in this case).
• An important note on TIMING (which is everything, as you can read more about here):
  On the original recording an effect called a ‘delay’ is used on the synthesiser (the part we learn how to play on the piano in this tutorial), that is set to repeat the chord every eighth-beat. As a delay is kind of like an ‘echo’ (not quite the same, will tell more in a future post) repeating a sound that is played a couple of times, getting softer with every repetition on the piano we can simulate this effect by playing the first beat loud, and then all following eighth-beats softer.
  So try and play all eighth-beats, but accentuating (playing louder) every first time you play a new chord. Pay close attention on how demonstrate this in the video. It makes A LOT of difference. Apart from that, try and keep a really steady beat!

Ok, that’s all. Enjoy the lesson! If you have any questions please ask them in the comments below.
Also please share both the video and this post with as many of your friends and foe’s that you think might benefit from it.

Have a:

Wonderful Christmas Time.

Happy playing and a merry Christmas!

Cheers, Coen.