Hey Friend,

I want to shift gears today and break away from modes and melody. Give you a little break...

Since we are in the thick of holiday season with some radio stations going full-on into Christmas music, I thought I’d pass on a resource I came across recently. Better to get  a jump on the holiday preparation than wait until the last minute, right? Right...

Guitar World puts up a lot of video instruction on the Web. They also publish instructional DVDs, and sometimes their online video comes from those DVDs.

A few years back, they released a Christmas song DVD, and in the spirit of the holidays, they took a handful of videos from the DVD and put them up on the website.

The instructor is Jimmy Brown (a long-time Guitar World contributor who hosts “String Theory”). Jimmy teaches a wide range of styles, from Classic and Blues Rock to Classical. 

These Christmas songs focus more on chords and strumming, so we’ll get your mind focused on something other than scale patterns and force your fingers to work in tandem rather than individually.

Jimmy does us a solid by including multiple keys, so if you happen to be accompanying a group of singers, you can easily change the key to something easy for everyone.

There are a lot of chord changes in each video, but they tend to be simple open chords. As you listen, though, you’ll hear why the changes make sense. In most cases you can hear the melody coming though in the chords.

That’s something good to remember - the chords of a song follow the key of the melody, and you will often hear melody notes sounding more prevalent in the chords you’re playing.  

Here are the songs you can learn:

Whether you celebrate the holiday or not, working on these songs will help you keep your chord playing in shape. Not only do you get to practice speed changing, but your technique will benefit as you ensure the changes are smooth and the chords ring out clearly.

You WILL get a good workout with these videos - as one of my drill sergeants in Basic Training always said, "Don’t cheat your body!”

Give them a try. C’mon, it’ll be fun!

Peace~

Dave