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It's December.......

....and that means you'll be hearing holiday music everywhere you go. Whether it's a syrupy orchestral arrangement of 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful' or a country music version of 'Baby It's Cold Outside', I typically do my best to avoid it, but this year I've had fun working up a bass version of 'Jingle Bells' with a student, and it got me thinking...

After learning the melody we started thinking about what the chords should be, and we realized the only ones it really needs are the I, IV, and V. The melody was a comfortable fit in the key of G, so I, IV, and V are G, C, and D. My student is making a sort of 'musical christmas card' by programming a drum groove, recording the melody, and then overdubbing the chords, which sounds really cool and is all her. It got me thinking about a version for playing live, and I remembered the 'Lemmy's tone' video which shows Lemmy chording his way thru a I - IV - V in the key of A using the open A, D, and E strings.

Sure enough, if you transpose the melody up to A, it turns out to be pretty easy to use open strings to have the root of each chord ringing out under the melody:

The second half can be played an octave higher if you have 23 frets, ( or have 22 and don't mind bending for the F# in the next to last measure ), or you can use the 5th fret of the A string instead of the open D so the D string is available for the lower F#s and Es.

It sounds cool and it's easy, so far so good! But it seemed like it would be possible to do a little more with it:

The D string sections in the second half, ( measures 52, 53, 60, and 61 ), are a little counter intuitive - you play melodically on the G and A strings while the open D is ringing out. I notated the second half in treble clef because those notes need to be in that octave to be consonant and the high F# is six ledger lines in bass clef - it makes more sense just to put them in the clef they fit in. The open D string parts feel a little weird at first, but they're really not that big of a deal.

The one remaining thing on my mind was the idea that there was probably room for a few more chords, here's what I came up with:

This version doesn't need the open strings to be ringing out at all times, and there are some places where it won't be possible. It is playable on 4 string if you have 24 frets, but much easier if you have a C string, ( or if you have a B - E - A - D - G 5tring, transpose it down to E ). If you're really ambitious, try figuring out a way to work an F diminished chord into the second half of measure 87, ( over the lyrics 'all the' ).

If you'd like a PDF copy of the charts, shoot me a note.

Happy Holidays y'all!

Rob.

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