lessons | silent night



Christmas Songs for Beginning Guitar

Learn a simple arrangement of "Silent Night."

Peter Penhallow began playing piano and imitating Elvis Presley at the age of three, and he took up guitar at age nine. He has cowritten and coproduced demos with members of Yes, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; the Dixie Dregs, and the Tubes. He has played in recording sessions with Mark O'Connor, Huey Lewis band members Bill Gibson and Mario Cippolina, and many others. Penhallow has been a musical director for Children's and Community Musical Theater in Marin County, California, for 20 years and has more than 100 productions to his credit.

In this lesson Penhallow teaches a simple strummed version of the Christmas classic "Silent Night." That song and 14 other holiday classics are in an easy-to-play collection of holiday favorites called Christmas Songs for Beginning Guitar.

To hear the examples, you need the RealPlayer plug-in. Enjoy your lesson, and for more great holiday guitar lessons, check out the instructional book/CD, Christmas Songs for Beginning Guitar.

Find out more about Christmas Songs for Beginning Guitar.

See some more of our great resources at the Beginners Resource Center and explore some more of our free on-line lessons.

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Silent Night

Joseph Mohr, an assistant pastor, wrote a poem called "Stille Nacht" that was meant for Christmas Eve service. The organ, however, was broken. Franz Gruber, the church organist, composed the melody and arranged it for voice and guitar on the spot, just in time for midnight mass. So this beautiful song came into being back in 1818.

This tune is in 3/4 time, which gets three beats per measure, and is most commonly found in a waltz. The strum pattern therefore is: one bass note followed by two strums. The song is in the key of E, which is very much a guitar key.

Before we start to play, let's tune up to standard pitch.

Tune up

Here is the basic accompaniment pattern.

Accompaniment pattern played up to tempo
Accompaniment pattern played slowly

Now click on the next page to learn the whole song.

 


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© 2002 String Letter Publishing, Inc., David A. Lusterman, Publisher.