Fingerstyle guitar provides the perfect medium for capturing the beautiful chords and unforgettable melodies of Christmas Carols and Holiday Standards. In this collection John Miller has put together arrangements of twenty such songs designed to appeal to guitarists with a wide range of fingerstyle skill and experience.

What a range of expressions and moods these songs communicate! From the ancient-sounding O Come, O Come Emmanuel to the high spirits of Deck The Halls, the uplifting quality of Go Tell It On The Mountain and the serenity of Silent Night, you’ll find it all here. The arrangements also cover a lot of ground in terms of the keys and tunings. You’ll be playing pieces in C, A, A minor, D, D minor, G, and B minor in standard tuning; D and A minor in dropped-D tuning and four in Open G tuning. You’ll be building your chordal vocabulary at the same time you’re building your repertoire.

All of the arrangements are notated in standard notation and tablature, and links to downloadable sound samples of the arrangements are provided so that you’ll be able to hear how the arrangements sound when played. Lyrics for the songs are provided, too, along with:

• An explanation of the TAB used in the book

• Guidance on how to go about selecting and learning the arrangements

• Playing tips that describe the most efficient ways to finger the songs in the fretting hand

• An appendix, which offers diagrams indicating fingering for the chord shapes you’ll encounter most often in the book.

Here’s an opportunity to build the skills that will enable you to boost everyone’s spirits at the next holiday gathering. People really respond to a beautiful fingerstyle performance of a favorite Christmas Carol or Holiday Standard, and it could be you doing one at the next party.

Titles include: What Child Is This?, Silent Night, Jingle Bells, Jolly Old St. Nicholas, Away In A Manger, Good King Wenceslas, Go Tell It On The Mountain, Up On The Housetop, Sleep, Sleep, Of the Father’s Love Begotten, We Wish You A Merry Christmas, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, In the Bleak Midwinter, Deck The Halls, Angels We Have Heard On High, The First Nowell, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, Once In Royal David’s City, The Wassail Song, God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen

Level 2/3 • 76 pages • Direct download link to audio files