Mastering Christmas Carols on the Piano and Keyboard: Silent Night

Update: This page has finally been updated with higher quality images (click on any piece of music to get the full size, print quality version in A4 size) as well as audio files so you can hear how the music should sound.

View a range of Christmas Carols Music Books at Amazon.

The third carol I’ll look at in our series on mastering Christmas Carols on Piano and Keyboard is “Silent Night”:

Introduction

Silent Night is written and played in the key of C Major, and has a 3/4 (waltz time) time signature (as does Away in a Manger).

Main Melody

Several short phrases in each verse are repeated.

The first phrase, to which the words “Silent Night” are sung, is repeated twice. The third and fourth lines have the same 4-bar melody.

Here’s the complete melody written out:

Those notes are: G A G : E : G A G : E : D D : B : C C : G : A A : C B A : G A G : E : A A : C B A : G A G : E : D D : F D B : C : E : C G E : G F D : C

And here’s what it sounds like:

Note that there are a number of places with a similar rhythm, formed by a dotted crotchet (quarter note) followed by a quaver (eighth note) and a crochet (quarter note). These take up one bar’s worth of time. Imagine that the bar is split into 6 half-beats. The first note (dotted crochet/quarter-note) takes 3 of these; the second note (quaver/eighth note) takes just 1 of these; the final crochet (quarter note) takes the remaining 2 half-beats.

[Read more]

Popularity: 100% [?]