Simpedia

Stephen R., California

There’s the White and Blue Christmas I’ll suggest to my readers, Christmas pieces in blues styles. I have used Songs for Christmas quite a bit as accompaniments and different levels of difficulty. I might suggest the Music for Christmas and the New Year because it has transposed versions for added challenge.

Maureen K., California

Jingle Bells is pretty easy. Teach the melody playing-based. Do a duet where one students plays Jackson Blues accompaniment style and people sing. Then that student continues the accompaniment while the second student solos on the melody higher up in the piano. Then everyone sings the chorus again,.

Cheri S., Utah

Accompaniment at Christmas time can be really fun. But students do like to play familiar melodies too! I’ve challenged myself to get a little creative each Christmas season and design a playing-based song for my students. I’ve borrowed ideas from other teachers and created some of my own.

Jingle Bells is a great playing-based melody. Along with the duet idea, you can also use the lead sheet to teach a simple LH part–the student could even just play single LH notes.

Any song that’s in the public domain is fine to teach in a playing-based way. So think about Christmas songs you love, Google to see what’s public domain, and fiddle around a little to see which songs have clear repeating patterns.

Or you can even use YouTube to help your students learn one. Just make sure you look for “easy” piano tutorials! Also, this takes some coaching to help them find the patterns, because the tutorials are often just a string of letter names.

The music for “Carol of the Bells” also seems to be in the public domain, though the lyrics are not. That’s a really pattern-based one that many teachers teach playing-based.

Your level 3 students may already know Greensleeves, a traditional tune used in the Christmas song “What Child is This?”. Maybe you could teach them one of the arrangements to fancy it up a bit for Christmas.