How to play Jingle Bells Fingerstyle for Christmas
Jingle Bells is one of the most popular, most cheery of all Christmas songs. The 19th Century original by James Pierpont (it’s Wikipedia entry is well worth a read) refers to sleigh bells as ‘jingle bells’ - but you don’t have to be in a snow-bound place to know this song - it gets sung everywhere from Greenland to the Australian Outback! This finger-style version includes chord symbols so a second guitar/ukulele can accompany with the chords, or for a sing along and hey-ho, the whole lot can go together! Merry Christmas all!
Genre: Christmas song
Chords: C F D7 G G7
Acoustic or Electric? Will sound best on a good acoustic guitar; steel strings or nylon.
Can we change the key? This version is in the key of C Major. To play it in the key of D the chords you need are D G E7 A A7. For the key of A play A D B7 E E7. For any other key it’s best just to use a capo and copy the C major version.
Picking style: This arrangement of Jingle Bells is written for finger picking on acoustic guitar. It suits both steel and nylon string . Th classic Country/Folk style of this chart requires the thumb (p) to maintain the tempo with strong bass notes on the 1st and 3rd beats, and your index and middle fingers (i & m) picking the the melody notes. Ho ho ho !
Can it work with a thumb-pick & hybrid picking? Yes, definitely! This works perfectly on steel string acoustics and gives the arrangement a fun Folksy-Country vibe. Not so suitable for the softer action of a nylon-string acoustic though; classical finger-style is best for that.
Relevant pages in Modern Guitar Chord Styles 1: To learn more about the chords and finger picking in JIngle Bells go to pages 7 - 8, 12, 18-19, 43 and 45 in MGCS1. For a detailed course in finger picking and it’s stylistic applications check out the very useful Modern Guitar Fingerstyle 1.
Need a bit of help?
Modern Guitar Fingerstyle 1 is the perfect companion for our fingerpicking song guides- it is specifically designed to help beginners develop finger independence, tone and articulation, helping guitarists master their fingerpicking abilities!
