[Kirk Lorange]

Here's another 3/4 time strum. It's pretty much the same as Silent Night, but here I'm strumming a chord on every beat of the bar, as opposed to picking the root then strumming two beats. You hear that I dig in a little more for the first beat, keep the second two a little lighter. That keeps it a bit more musical. It's all down strokes except one spot where I allow the pick to strum the strings on the up stroke -- in bar 9 and as I start up again before the fade out, you can hear that I'm adding that upstroke for the second half as a dynamic build.

This one has a few more chords and they change quicker than Silent Night, so you'll need to lock the progression in mentally to come to grips with this. I don't recommend that you keep relying on reading the chord chart in the tab. It's much better to commit the sequence to memory. You'll find in the long run that the more progressions you remember, the more you start seeing the way they fall into certain patterns that you recognize ... by sight (reading the chord names) and by hearing (hearing the changes). Eventually, after years, you can simply hear a piece of music and know what it is without even holding a guitar to check. You'll never get to that stage if you're constantly relying on reading charts.

Like silent Night, I did this in G, being the only key that didn't involve any barre chords, but remember that if your vocal group prefers a higher key, just clamp a capo on the neck and keep playing the chord shapes that are in the tab. Here are some positions:

Key of G ... no capo
Key of A ... capo 2nd fret
Key of Bb ... capo 3rd fret
Key of C ... capo 5th fret
Key of D ... capo 7th fret

Any higher than D gets a little dicey.

I've posted links to the midi files below



Midi full speed | Midi half speed

Play the chords as indicated in the diagrams above the tab. The tab is the melody line that you hear in the midi.