For this year’s Christmas Special I’ve done a chord melody arrangement of one of my favourite festive tunes. It’s taken from the soundtrack to  A Charlie Brown Christmas, a brilliant film which always seemed to be a part of my childhood Christmasses, and one that I still watch every year.

Whilst I wouldn’t describe it as easy to play, I have tried to make this version accessible to non-jazz players. If you work on it slowly, phrase by phrase, making sure you’re using exactly the right fingering, then you should be able to get it together without too many problems. It needs to be played fingerstyle in the right hand. I generally use my thumb for the bass notes and three other fingers for all the other notes. Occasionally there are chords which contain 5 notes and here you can either use your little finger as well, brush 2 strings together with your index finger, or just omit one of the notes.

My arrangement is written out below. Click here to download a high-quality, printable PDF. Merry Christmas!

 

Here’s a lovely chord melody arrangement of the festive standard. Great for those awkward moments when you’re surrounded by friends and family members and are expected to play a nice piece of music. This arrangement is taken from Kenny Burrell’s album Have Yourself A Soulful Little Christmas. He plays it accompanied by a rhythm section, but the piece works really well when played solo.

I’ve written it out below, exactly as played by Burrell. The version I play in the video sticks quite closely to this but deviates a little bit here and there, particularly in the rhythm. As I say in the video, feel free to make the piece your own, taking  the written arrangement as a starting point. A printable PDF can be found here. There’s certainly some quite demanding things going on here technically, even for experienced jazz players. With that in mind, I’ve also written out a slightly simpler arrangement. The essence of it is still there, I’ve just got rid of some of those big stretches and difficult passages. Find that version here.