I’m a year in to JG, working Grade 2 module 10-11.
My brother in law plays piano and we came up with the idea of doing a christmas duet. I visited him with my guitar and tried strumming along to him playing Silent night. Listeners were polite but the result is quite unsatisfying - the guitar is not adding anything - just droning amateurishly in the background.
In module 10 i learned about improvising and i tried treating a recording of the piano part as a backing track but i couldn’t do much with it. I’m currently thinking i’ll try plaing the melody over it but i think that would just be playing the same notes as the piano.
Does anyone have any suggestions? The pianist is fairly sophisticated and he could probably adapt what he’s playing somewhat. There’s a link to the piano part below.
As an inspiration, I checked that amateur duet on youtube. And what makes it sounds good to me is that they are both locked in the rhythm. They change chords at the same time. And they are playing in the same key with the help of the capo. She is playing a simplified fingerstyle version without all the melody, but it still sounds good.
Similarly, I assume it could sound good too with a strumming version played with emotions like this one, maybe a few strums per bar. So my question is what made it sounds amateurishly ? Could it be that you guys were not playing exactly in time ? Or you were playing an arrangement in different key ?
Suggestions in order of difficulty :
The best one but it’s more complicated (grade 3 song):
@math07 The duet video is inspiring. I’m not sure about the key but i think the guitarist is playing the chords in a pattern like what justin demos in module 11. also, as you note they are very much in time with each other. Your point about the fewer strums is good too. Thanks very much to you and Adrian.
Unless you’re set on Silent Night for specific reasons, have you tried picking another xmas song , or songs that work better with piano and guitar; ones with a bit more groove to it?
You may find that easier, and alot more fun.
I’d also give Silent Night a miss. Yes it’s a lovely melody but not very inspiring (musically I mean, obviously it’s inspiring in the Christian sense).
Lots of the traditional Christmas songs ,not carols, can have quite a jazzy feel to them especially those from the ‘Hollywood’ era. Those would suit piano and guitar.
Also some good songs in Justin’s book. https://www.amazon.co.uk/JustinGuitar-Christmas-Songbook-Justin-Sandercoe/dp/1785583700
Yes, I was going to say arpeggios too. Like in Mathieu’s first example. Here you said you did, but it 's so hard to hear.
Could you play even louder? I think that there are quite a few ways to play fitting arpeggios, slower or quicker. But I would suggest using the 3 higher strings a bit more than you did here.
I’ll go practicing some festive stuff now too
, but this is revenge for putting the Christmas song in my head on a beautiful summer day 
