Christmas: the most creative time of the year

How to help your students to create their own versions of their favourite carols

Everyone who celebrates Christmas creates their own version of the Christmas ritual. It might involve midnight mass, listening to a favourite carol on repeat, or eating too many mince pies, but we all do it at least slightly differently.

Similarly, it’s really rewarding to create your own version of Christmas carols.

I love Gustav Holst’s In The Bleak Midwinter, but I couldn’t help but wonder what it would sound like in compound time and a minor key, so I wrote my own arrangement. Here’s the wonderful Julian Lambert performing it, alongside Holst’s original and a lovely jazzy version by Nikki Iles.

Carols from lead sheets: a massive opportunity

Christmas is the best time of year to introduce students to working from lead sheets. Sure, you could just teach them a pre-existing arrangement, but you’re missing a wonderful opportunity to get creative. If you’ve never taught carols from lead sheets before, why not try it out this year?

Lead sheets are a fantastic opportunity to introduce your elementary students to playing chords. You can teach or review the following theory topics:

• how to construct major and minor chords

• chords within keys, plus more advanced concepts like

  • the roman numeral system for labelling chords within keys I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii𛲅

  • primary and secondary chords

  • typical chord progressions

• block chords

• different types of broken chords

• more complex chords like 7ths, 9ths, “add” chords and suspensions

• transposition

Your first Christmas lead sheet

If you’ve never done this before I recommend starting by selecting an enjoyable carol in C major and creating an accompaniment out of root position block chords.

My favourite free resource for Christmas carol lead sheets is Michael Kravchuk’s excellent website. It is totally free of charge, the carols are transposable (so you can put everything into C major for your beginners) and the formatting is really clear.

Taking it further

For slightly more advanced students you can:

• introduce them to good voice-leading by using inversions

• turn block chords into other simple broken chord patterns

For more advanced students you can explore:

• reharmonising

• adding colour tones (e.g. 6ths, 7ths and 9ths)

• key changes (both temporary and permanent)

• metre changes

If this makes you feel a bit out of your depth, don’t worry! Just start simple. Select a carol with which you’re familiar, play block chords in your left hand and the melody in the right. That’s plenty of lesson material for elementary students.

Great Christmas lead sheet resources

As well as this post, I’ve put together reviews of three brilliant Christmas lead sheet resources.

I’ll be sharing them over the next few days. Watch this space!