Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum The Little Black Book of Christmas Songs

I need your help how to play the songs in this little book. It enlists the lyrics and the chords. Though technically I can play the individual chords, I am not sure how to play the songs. Will I play the chord with RH? At which register ? What shall I play with the LH while playing the chord with the RH ? Will I play the key note ? The octave ? How many times shall I play a specific chord before I move to the next ? What is the ratio ? At what speed?

I know that I have many questions... But hey I have no idea how to approach each song. This book is for beginners and I am at loss.

What am I missing ?

I could probably offer you a little help in how to return books for a refund. There are certain types of books that probably shouldn't be bought without having thumbed thru them first to see if they will be useful to you.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/css/returns/homepage.html/ref=hy_f_4/189-5097263-6423262

Hi Joseph,
I can teach you how to do that. You can contact me here or via my email at info@planetmullins.com if you like.

Sounds like the book is more for guitar than for piano. Anyway, are you singing and playing? Or would you like the option of instrumental only? There is a lot of advice as to how to play lead sheets. A search on that topic may turn up the answers you need, or more than you ever wanted to know.

There is no one size fits all. Some like to do chords on the right, bass note on the left, or arpeggiate the same chord on the left (or right). It is going to sound trite, but trust your ears.

As a piano beginner that likes to do my own arrangements, trusting my ears is the bottom line. Often those that don't have any arranging in their blood have a puzzled look as to my choices. For instrumentals, I like to play melody on the right, and simple harmonies on the left, often one or two notes with a rare triad. These arrangements are simple, so I might have the option of singing. Singing gets really hard for a piano beginner, doubly so with a full arrangement (vs. the simple ones that I favor).

If a person wants instrumental versions, the melody lines will be needed. For traditional Christmas songs, there are tons at:
http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind

Input the name of the song, select PDF format for sheet music output. If a person wants to take that melody and add the chords, select MIDI output and send it over to Musescore to add the chords to the sheet music by hand.

Thanks Sand Tiger for your mindful response.

It could be a question of terminology. I managed to find some clear guidance on how to play a lead sheet or from a fake book. The lead sheet usually has the melody in a treble staff with the lyrics below it and the chords above it. It a time signature and a key signature. In short, you play the melody with the RH and the chords with LH.

However, my book does not have the melody. It has simply the lyrics and the chords above. It is a songbook. I am not interested in signing. I am just interested in playing these songs practicing my chords and their inversions.

Unless it is called something else, I could not find guidance how to play from a songbook.

It occurred to me tonight that I could practice it as follows :
RH plays the chord for every syllable until the next chord and the LH plays either the root note or the octave of the root note of the chord being played by the RH.

Is this a valid interpretation ?