A pianist breaks down his jazzy arrangement of Jingle Bells from Softly Christmas, recorded in one take. He walks through unconventional harmonic choices like major 7ths, tritone passing tones, and diminished chords that create tension and release, plus performance tips for navigating quick melody jumps and chromatic lines.
Okay, so this is Jingle Bells from Softly Christmas. It's the last song of the album. You can listen to all this music on Spotify and Apple Music and Amazon Music and YouTube Music and all those. I don't know, there's about 50 of them out there, I swear. My music's on all of them. But this one's a little more fun. It's a little jazzy. And honestly, the way that I recorded this is I just sat down in the studio and I just said, roll it. And I played this one time and then I stopped and that was it. So I just made this up on the spot and then transcribed it down to paper. I actually had somebody help me transcribe it down to paper. I have a great person that helps me do that. But this song is pretty fun. I'll talk through it. Sometimes jazz is a little bit more uncomfortable for some people. I'll talk through some elements that might be a little bit harder, but we'll just play through it. Sorry, I actually played that wrong. But it's very free. This one's supposed to be free. You're going to hear in jazz notes where you're like, wait, is that right? Is that— like, did he get that right? There's all kinds of weird stuff with that. You've got a major 7th, an F sharp, and an F, which don't sound good together. And you've got a C and an F# as well, right? And then you throw a D in there, so you got an F, an F#, and a D, and then you throw in the tritone. Just sounds terrible in normal music, but if you use it kind of as a passing tone to create some, uh, tension, then you can push through and resolve it, right? So Ah, feels so good in your ear after being— then this next note, this D, it's actually supposed to hit pretty fast, right? Supposed to kind of just jump right into it. So Okay, and this is kind of a mix, kind of jazzy, it's kind of a mix of like my style, which is, which is not jazz always. But anyway, it's kind of a fun going back and forth between some of these things. You hit that same F sharp again, and then here we go. That's definitely not jazz, then we jump right back into it. And then we'll do jazz again. I bring the jazz back. Okay, so now we've kind of done this intro, we got some jazz We got some not jazz, we're kind of getting some chords in there that kind of keep tension, and then we just move right into So I, I have just kind of these moments. It's again very free, have fun with it, you know. I kind of just jump right into this bouncy and then immediately back out of it. That's easy. It's just a D or B-flat minor. It's Sorry, yeah, a B-flat diminished. Is it? No, it's a D diminished. See, and I, I even kind of at the end there am out of jazz again, right? And I ask for one more, one more chromatic little down to remind you that you're in jazz. So that's a fun one, Jingle Bells. It's often Christmas, you can also get it whenever, but I hope that helps you understand the song. I hope you enjoy it.
