COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION

COPYRIGHTS & PERMISSIONS: All arrangements and tabs in this blog are the original work of the blog owner, unless otherwise noted. They may be downloaded and copied at no charge, only for non-commercial church or home use. All other rights reserved. Ask for permissions-- I intend to be generous. Copyright information for each song is listed in its commentary. Arrangements and tabs of public domain songs are still covered by these copyright restrictions. Your cooperation is appreciated.

Joy to the World!

Public domain. There are no hard chords or transitions in this song! You can play it along with the music as printed in Hymns (# 201), or you can do variations. My favorite variation is to slow down the tempo in the second half of the song. After "Let earth receive her King!" I switch to 4/4 time. This slows the notes down too much for singing, but is just fine as an instrumental solo. It also emphasizes the part about every heart preparing room for the Savior, which I think is the main point of the song. I also like to repeat "Let earth receive her King!" as a finale.

Silliest Twelve Days ever

The song:

OK friends, back by popular (?) demand, here's the Twelve Days of Christmas. Well, at least the Twelfth Day of Christmas. No need to print the other eleven, as the twelfth day repeats them all anyway. It's so easy, I'm only including the cheat sheet. Not exactly a guitar solo, but okay for accompanying the weird lyrics. You probably won't be asked to perform it more than once, anyway. It's the only Twelve Days parody I know that's even dumber than the original.

The story: (of course, there is a story)

Shortly after I joined the Mormon Church, somebody did the Twelve Days to my family, leaving a present on the porch, knocking on the door, and running. We couldn't identify them, as they used a different car every night. (We later found out it was our branch Mutual, but at the time, we were so new we didn't know there was a Mutual.) It made us feel incredibly loved, as it could have been ANYBODY.

I have never been able to remember what the other eleven were, but the first one was a cartridge in a bare tree. So I have done my best to recreate the spirit of the rest of the presents, using whatever was available and cheap. I'll try to include photos, if I can get the camera to work. (Christmastime is NOT the best time of year to drop a camera!) Yes, we are actually presenting these gifts to a local family. What goes around, comes around.

Free Christmas sheet music

Wonderful website review: ChristmasCarolMusic.org is a collection of scores (pardon the pun) of famous (and not-so-famous) Christmas carols, arranged for SATB, guitar, and other instruments. It contains almost every famous carol that is in the public domain, plus many really OLD carols. No tablatures, unfortunately, and the scores arranged for guitar are melody only, plus "easy chords". I guess there are a lot of guitarists around who only want easy stuff to play. That being said, it's a great resource to mine for ideas and melody lines, and you can always get your harmonies from the SATB scores. That's shorthand for "Soprano-Alto-Tenor-Bass," for you non-choir people. The link is at right in the linklist. Best free sheet music site on the web!