It’s the day before Christmas and we bring you a beloved Christmas carol with this Silent Night ukulele tutorial.
SILENT NIGHT UKULELE TUTORIAL
First of all, you’ll need only three chords for Silent Night: C, G7 and F. Because the song is in ¾ time, the strumming pattern follows D-DU-D (D-down, U-up) repetition. Secondly, Jenny gives tips on fingerpicking the chords in the video. So that’s two ways you can play the song. Thirdly, Jenny fingerpicks the melody, also known as solo ukulele. You can either sing and go with the simple D-DU-D pattern or practice fingerpicking. In a cool split-screen part in the video, Jenny works with the D-DU-D strum pattern on one screen and does the melody fingerpicking on the other screen.
Jenny will go over how to strum the chords and how to fingerpick both the chords and the melody in a Facebook live session on Thursday, December 27th at 4:30 PM Central. Also, Jenny will talk about how to create your own chord melody or solo ukulele (both chords and melody) version of Silent Night.
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FROM A GERMAN ORIGINAL “STILLE NACHT”
Silent Night is an English translation of the German original entitled Stille Nacht. For many years, many have thought that Silent Night was composed by one of the most famous classical composers such as Beethoven, Mozart or Haydn. But in 1995, musical researchers have uncovered a handwritten manuscript of Stille Nacht estimated to have been made in the 1820s.
Accordingly, Father Joseph Mohr, wrote the lyrics of this now very famous Christmas carol in 1816 while assigned to a church in Mariapfarr, Austria. Two years later, while working as a priest in a local church in another Austrian village called Oberndorf, he discovered that the church organ has been damaged by flooding. Subsequently, he brought his Stille Nacht lyrics to a church organist and composer called Franz Xaver Gruber. So Gruber created the music for Stille Nacht to be performed on Christmas Eve at Father Mohr’s Saint Nicholas Church.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Silent Night is one of the songs in our best-selling and award-winning book 21 Easy Ukulele Songs for Christmas. So don’t forget to get your copy.
All of us at ukulele.io are sending our happy Christmas wishes to all ukulele lovers out there. Happy strumming!
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