History of Jingle Bells

Video Transcript

Hi, I am Brand Gunnell, I am a music teacher in Orlando, Florida. I teach piano and guitar. I am here today on behalf of Expert Village to teach you how to play Jingle Bells on your piano. Jingle Bells was written by James DuPont about 1857. He was an organist for a Unitarian church in Savannah, Georgia. He moved all around. He lived in Metro, Massachusetts for awhile. His father was actually a reverend as well. He wrote this song as a Thanksgiving song for a program the children were doing at his church and the congregation loved it so much that they said please bring it back for the children at Christmas. He did it at Christmas and it became one of the most popular secular Christmas songs that there is today. The song was originally called One Horse Open Sleigh. Then it changed to Jingle Bells because that is the refrain. Today , to keep things simple we are just going to play the chorus of Jingle Bells. There is actually four verses to the entire song. For our purposes today, we will just be playing the chorus. So, now, what we are going to do is play the whole song straight through with both hands. Remember, we are in C position. We are timing four four. You don't have to play it very slow. This is a song that is suppose to be played good cheer, happy. Your are going to play it quickly. If you are an elementary school teacher you are going to play as fast as the kids are singing. You can have them slow it down, but they get carried away with this song. You want to be able to match them. It is a pretty easy song to be able to play quickly or slowly. I am going to play it straight through. That little flourish at the end all you have to do is just pop back up to these two C's. Since, we ended on the C chord,you can hit the low C and the C right above middle C together at the same time. We'll just play that again. It just adds a nice little touch at the end. I am going to take my pinkies and hit those when you are done.

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