Christmas Snowfall – Sheet Music

Inspired by the feeling of waking up on Christmas Morning to a fresh snowfall, these 17 arrangements of classic holiday songs are the perfect accompaniment to the quiet mornings and evenings of the holiday season. Adapted from the Christmas Snowfall CD, they are suitable for intermediate to advanced guitarists, and include tablature as well as standard notation charts for each song.

Excerpt from the Introduction:

When I was approached to produce the music for a DVD entitled A Christmas Snowfall, I knew instantly what feeling I wanted to capture- the sense of the stillness of the earth covered with a fresh layer of snow- the sound of footsteps in the virgin snow- and the feeling of coming into a firelit home after a brisk evening walk. I also knew that I wanted to take the historical weight these songs are imbued with and combine it with a modern musical sensibility.

The simplest way to approach this book is as a collection of professional quality arrangements of traditional Christmas songs for solo guitar. These arrangements are suitable for the concert hall as well as the living room, for steel string, electric, and classical guitars, and will be a welcome addition to any solo guitarists repertoire. You can also use these arrangements as a foundation for you to go beyond the written notes. Every chart has a complete chordal analysis, allowing you to improvise on the basic structure, play them with an ensemble, and edit and expand upon the basic material presented here.

My main intention, however, was to open a window into one professional guitarist’s approach to arranging and producing. Each of these arrangements takes the basic theme and adds material drawn from classical, jazz and contemporary music. Studying the material here, especially in combination with the CD from which these charts were adapted, will show you in a very visceral way how to take a song that you have heard hundreds of times and make that song your own. With harmonic substitutions, rhythmic accompaniments, and new melodic material, these go far beyond stock arrangements and become fresh and meaningful to contemporary musicians.

There is material here that every guitarist will find interesting and useful- whether you play contemporary acoustic, pop, jazz or classical music. I am happy to have the opportunity to share these arrangements with you, and I hope they help you along your musical journey.