Christmas Songs for Amateur Guitar and Low voice - arranged by Mark Anderson.
Mark´s son, Tobias, asked him to join Tobias for a weekend retreat at a camp during the Christmas season and bring his guitar so everyone could sing some Christmas carols. Mark happily agreed and headed down to the local music store to buy a Christmas collection since their hymnbook provided no chords. To his dismay, the collections that he found either included obscure chords (F#mSus4), or too many chords to play at a reasonable tempo, or melody lines that seemed to be written only for high sopranos or countertenors! The failure at the music store sent Mark to an online search that also turned up nothing useful, although there was a lot of grumbling about the absence of such a collection. Since then Mark have tried to gather a collection that would be both playable by the campfire guitarist and in a voice range comfortable for the back-pew alto. The twenty songs in this collection seemed amenable to such treatment. With only a few exceptions it relies on the kind of chords you can use to play Kumbaya and the melody line rarely goes above a third-space C. To accomplish this relies on a little practice, the availability of a capo, and if your particular campfire choir includes only sopranos and high tenors, moving the capo up a few frets to keep everyone happy. Please note: the richer harmonies experienced when singing and hearing these songs accompanied by a good keyboard player will be absent. Most of the songs are very familiar but a few are not.
Most of them are truly Christmas songs but a few are not. As John Wesley said: Sing lustily and with good courage!
This product is available for digital download only - the item includes :
- Angels, From the Realms of Glory
- Away in a Manger
- Deck the Hall
- Ding Dong! Merrily on High
- Go Tell It On the Mountain
- God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen
- Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
- Joy to the World
- Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming
- Mary Had a Baby
- (It Came Upon the) Midnight Clear
- O Come, All Ye Faithful
- O Little Town of Bethlehem
- O Sanctissima
- Once In Royal David’ s City
- Silent Night
- Still, Still, Still
- The first Noel
- What Child Is This?
- While By My Sheep
Historical notes about the songs are included.