Nat King Cole - The Christmas Song - Guitar Lesson

The Christmas Song (Expanded Edition)

2018 3:44

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About The Christmas Song

Few holiday standards sit as comfortably under the fingers as "The Christmas Song," yet playing it well on guitar demands real attention to voice leading and chord color. The key of Bb major puts you squarely in barre-chord territory, and the harmonic richness of the arrangement calls for extended voicings: major sevenths, minor ninths, and dominant thirteenths rather than plain open shapes. The warm, unhurried feel at 120 BPM in E Standard tuning gives you room to breathe, but that also means every note rings out and sloppy transitions between chords are exposed. The real challenge is keeping an even fingerstyle or chord-melody texture while the changes move through the circle of fifths in the bridge. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop that bridge section slowed down until the substitutions feel natural under your hand. Nat King Cole recorded this as a piano-led performance, so translating it to guitar means making your own arranging decisions, which is actually the most rewarding part of the whole exercise. Fans of Pop Rock picking up this tune will find it stretches their jazz harmony vocabulary considerably.

• Playing in Bb major on guitar means relying on barre chords and moveable shapes, so clean frethand pressure and smooth shifts are the core technical demand.
• Extended chord voicings such as major sevenths and dominant thirteenths are essential for capturing the lush harmonic character of this arrangement.
• The bridge moves through several quick harmonic shifts, making it the section most worth isolating with a slow loop until the fingering is reliable.