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O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fidelis): Mastering Christmas Carols on the Piano and Keyboard

Check out our complete series on mastering Christmas Carols on Piano and Keyboard.

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The second carol I’ll look at in our series on mastering Christmas Carols on Piano and Keyboard is “O Come All Ye Faithful”. It’s very famous, not least because the tune has been used for other less religious chants in schools, football fields, and queues, to name a few places!

View a range of Christmas Carols Music Books at Amazon.

O Come All Ye Faithful: Introduction

O Come All Ye Faithful is written and played in the key of G Major.

O Come All Ye Faithful: Main Melody

Unlike O Little Town of Bethlehem there are no repeating melody lines in the verse or chorus. Here’s the written score:

O Come All Ye Faithful melody line score

I recommend playing it through to get a feel for it. Note the occasional dotted crotchet (quarter note) and quaver (eighth note) combination.

O Come All Ye Faithful: Fingering

  • I’d start on the 4th finger, and play the first three bars as the notes naturally fall under your fingers.
  • On the B in the fourth bar, start on your 4th finger and run naturally, until sixth bar, where you play the E with your 2nd (index) finger stretching over the thumb that’s just played the F.
  • Use the same principle in 8th bar and the 13th bar.
  • Start each run of the chorus on the 4th finger.

O Come All Ye Faithful: Single Note Bass Line

Below is a simple bass line for the carol using just one note:

O Come All Ye Faithful bass line score

O Come All Ye Faithful: Adding harmony and fullness with chords

In the third version of O Come All Ye Faithful, I’ve added two- and three-note chords to the right hand, always with the melody note as the highest note. The bass line remains the same.

O Come All Ye Faithful chords score

O Come All Ye Faithful: Octaves in the bass line, more embellishment

The final version adds an octave interval to most of the bass line notes. I’ve also filled out the chords in the right hand so all are three-note chords (there’s a four-note chord in there too). If any places sound too crowded / heavy, or a chord is hard to play, feel free to drop one or more notes from it (except the top one, if you want to keep the tune). Experiment to see what sounds best:

O Come All Ye Faithful chords and bass score

O Come All Ye Faithful: Lyrics

O Come All Ye Faithful
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him,
Born the King of Angels;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

O Sing, choirs of angels,
Sing in exultation,
Sing all that hear in heaven God’s holy word.
Give to our Father glory in the Highest;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

All Hail! Lord, we greet Thee,
Born this happy morning,
O Jesus! for evermore be Thy name adored.
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

That’s it for now. Happy playing!

Series Index: Mastering Christmas Carols on the Piano and Keyboard

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