Note: As I explain below, the “one day wonder” is that I was able to learn a new complicated chord and.use in a new chord progression in a song that I already knew how to play and record in one day.
I downloaded Justin’s free Christmas songbook yesterday and thought that I should record a Christmas song, since I have sung carols all my life and have played carols, including this song, on the guitar at a few Christmas parties. I have a collection of Christmas song books and while I like all the arrangements of the songs in Justin’s book, I decided to go for something more challenging from a book by Bruce Emory. There is a nice chord progression on the next to last verse which goes D D#dim7 (which I play as xx1212) Em and Cmaj7 (x32000). I learned the D#dim7 chord yesterday and practiced for at least an hour on chord changes, but using in a song is a big challenge. I also occurred to me that the D#dim7 chord can also be thought of as a D7/D# chord. Here it is:
I gave an intro with an explanation of the fingerpicking pattern and mentioned the new chord progression. Notice that I stumbled through the new chord demonstration. I also stumbled on the lyrics once in the second verse.
I was astounded that I was able to play the D#dim7 chord correctly on all 3 verses in the second take on the first day, so I will call this a Christmas miracle
Also, thanks for Franz Gruber of Austria writing the song “ Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht” in 1818 to Joseph Mohr’s Christmas text or poem.
Rogier, Thanks. I decided to record this song yesterday morning and recorded the song last night and posted this morning. I was surprised that I was able to get the D#dim7 chord while playing and singing the song, since I just learned how to play the chord yesterday morning, but you can tell in the intro that the chord was a struggle. It helped that singing the song was easy, since I have sung this carol hundreds of times and to be fair to the beginners who might struggle with the simple version in Justin’s Christmas songbook, I’ve played the simple version dozens of times (perhaps over 100 times) in the past. I’m just celebrating learning the new D D#dim7 Em Cmaj7 chord progression and recording myself playing the song in one day. If I could just remember lyrics
@sairfingers Gordon, Thanks. I tended to think of the D#dim7 chord shape like a D7 chord played with fingers 2,3 and 4 and the first finger playing the D# on the 4th string, 1st fret. I wrote D7/D# above, but I don’t think that make sense from the point of view of music theory, since D# is not in the key of D, but it makes sense to me from a chord shape viewpoint. It certainly sounds good in this song between D and Em.
Also, I couldn’t find the chord in my chord encyclopedia until I remember that it was also an Ebdim7 or just Ebdim.
Hello Steve, that was a really beautiful version. So nicely sung and played .
I’m going to play ‘Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht’ tomorrow under the Christmas tree (in Austria we are celebrating X-mas on the 24th), and do hope, that it’s going to sound at least recognizable .
Good job in revisiting the carol and adding some sweeter sounds !
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