Top 5 Christmas Music Ideas For Piano Playing
- Jon Nolan
- Nov 3, 2022
- 3 min read
"It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year!!"
For those of you who are getting ready to start playing some Christmas music on your instrument, I'm going to list the top 5 popular ideas from students last year. All of the ideas come from a mixture of both traditional and modern/contemporary songs.
1. Jingle Bells - Traditional
This song always is a favorite amongst all the younger beginner students. They get super excited every year to play this song. Not only is it a great song for the beginner student, but you can also add or cut sections to fit the needs of the student. Some students start by playing "jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way...." Other students start the song by adding the "dashing through the snow" part. Either way, this song is a great starter song to the holiday season.
2. All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
Is this song overplayed every year on the radio, or is it super exciting to hear every time? It's one of those songs where you have no idea how to react to it, but all you want to do is dance to it; whether it would be in the car, out in public, or at home, you can't help but to dance every time the band kicks in.
This song is really cool to play in the chord chart format, but it's also a little easier to play in the lead sheet format because you can see where the exact chord transitions are in regards to the melody.
3. Linus and Lucy - From the Charlie Brown Christmas Special
I believe this piece is used in a couple of different Charlie Brown specials. This iconic piece not only kicks off the holiday season with a bang, but it's also arguably the most well known jazz piece. Jazz is not necessarily a Billboard Hot 100 genre; but every year around the holiday season, in my opinion, jazz suits the holidays like peanut butter and jelly.
There are two different versions to Linus and Lucy that I recommend: The beginner version is in the key of C major and does not include the jazz improvisation section. The beginner version is probably suited better for late beginner and early intermediate level piano players. The harder version is the one you hear in the original recording and is in the key of A-flat major. I recommend whether you're working on the easier or harder versions, take your time and start before Thanksgiving.
4. The 12 Days of Christmas - Traditional
Every year, this song always turns in to twenty days of Christmas. The piece is two pages long but it feels like sixty. The students always do a great job every year with finding the right notes and rhythms through the music, but we sometimes can't keep up with the amount of days while we're navigating the sheet music. There are so many repeat signs, it's ridiculous. Keeping up with the notes plus rhythms, plus repeat signs, plus days of Christmas, really gets the brain working BIG TIME! It's worth the challenge and always fun to do so.
5. White Christmas - Irving Berlin
I have to put this one last because White Christmas is a song that can be played in so many different styles. Working with beginner to advanced students, this song always blends the skill ranges together. No matter if a student is a beginner or extremely skilled, White Christmas, in the lead-sheet format, can be played as a beginner style or a creative expressionistic style. For the younger beginner students, I have them only play the melody notes with one or two hands. The older beginner students play this song with chords on the left-hand and the melody notes on the right-hand. The more experienced students can use this song with both chords and melody to create their own versions. It's simple enough for students' improvisational skills to shine through as well.
Comments