Christmas Song Instrumentals (Chord Solos)!
Last winter, while I was mostly skipping holiday stuff and taking care of my mom’s house out of state, I started messing around on my guitar trying to put together an instrumental version of Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time is Here,” that classic mellow jazz piece from A Charlie Brown Christmas. By the time it started sounding good it was mid-January so I’d missed my opportunity to share it during the actual holidays 😜 I set the arrangement aside with a mental note to try to post it in time for the holidays this year.
And I remembered to do it! In fact, I enjoyed working on the arrangement so much I attempted 2 more holiday songs: Mel Tormé’s classic, made famous by Nat King Cole, Merry Christmas To You (aka The Christmas Song, aka Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, the non-jolly Met Me In St. Louis version of which remains my favorite.
And if you’re a guitar player and want tabs of my arrangements, I made some! You can download pdfs of all 3 songs from my store, and if you wouldn’t mind sending me $2 for the effort it would definitely help make my season bright. They’re intermediate level so if you’ve got a little guitar experience and are comfortable reading tabs you should have no problem with them. Heck, you can probably embellish them a little and make them your own! And if you do let me know, I’d love to see what you do with them.
I hope you have a lovely holiday season and if you have a youtube playlist of holiday songs, I think these would fit right in.
And for you gearheads, I’m playing a Gretsch G5622 into Apple Mainstage using the Boutique British Combo amp and the Boutique British 2×12 cabinet miced with a Dynamic 57. There’s a little room reverb using the Space Designer reverb plugin “Diffuse Hall” setting. My audio interface is a MOTU M4 🤓