In this instructional YouTube video, pianist Jon Cheney walks through his solo‑piano arrangement that fuses the classic holiday tune “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” with the “When Christmas Comes to Town” theme from The Polar Express. He explains the piece’s overall structure, contrasts the full orchestral version with the piano reduction, and demonstrates the performance while offering detailed commentary. Throughout the walkthrough he highlights key technical elements: the left‑hand rhythmic pattern (noting its similarity to a drummer’s groove), precise pedal usage to avoid muddiness, dynamic shaping between big, punchy forte sections and softer passages, and specific fingering solutions for a series of unusual flats and accidentals (including C‑flat, G‑flat, and a B‑scale‑like approach). He also demonstrates an “extra‑hand” technique where the right hand assists the left in a dense passage, and provides practice tips such as isolating patterns, focusing on light pedal, and letting final notes ring out to emulate the orchestral cello sustain. The video concludes with a brief recap and encouragement to enjoy the piece.
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Santa's Bringing Christmas to Town. So this is a good mix of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town and When Christmas Comes to Town from Polar Express. And so this song has a wonderful big fun arrangement. If you listen to it on Apple Music or Spotify or whatever, it's a nice big orchestral arrangement with lots of instruments and lots of different things, and it's really fun. But it's also very fun to play as a solo piano piece, and and here it is. It's available in the Christmas piano book that's available on my website. I'm going to play through this song and talk through it, kind of do an instructional playthrough and see if there's anything that I need to point out or talk about, talk about how I hit certain notes, whatever. It's a fun song, not super hard. There's nothing really in here where I'm just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I hit that. Oh, that was the hardest part. It is moving, it moves along, so it's pretty quick. Starts off slow and then we just kind of go into it. And you know, right here it says have fun, so that's kind of what this song is about. So let's play through it. In the beginning here it says play freely. That is right, by the way. That's an A-flat there on the bottom and an A-natural on the top, so it's going to create some dissonance. Now more steady. And up to here we've been pretty slow, and now we're gonna get going. Accidentally forgot of a, uh, whole rest on measure 38, but there's nothing there anyway. It's empty. But so you want to be— as you get into this, you want to make sure you get the left hand pattern right. It's going to take a minute to get it right, right? It's a very good— if you're a drummer, you'll get it, no problem, because you're good at rhythm. That's all you do. But, um, just kind of focus on it, and it kind of fits in when you're playing. Now I say right here, light on the pedal. Um, if you don't, if you're not light on the pedal, this is what it will sound like. Pedal through, it's kind of muddy. But you want that left hand and right hand to all be punchy and come out. You want to hear all those individual— so I'm actually using the pedal, right? But I'm only using it on the— when the low notes— when the, when the bottom hand is, um, is being held out, right? Right there. And then I'm off, and then I'm on again. I want to get here a lot, right? I'll talk about that. So I'm letting those— I'm letting the piano just kind of hit its, you know, kind of more percussive sound here. And then we're going to go into boom, big pedal, right? So And we're going here. So now we've done this, um, when Christmas comes, uh, when Christmas comes down. Okay, that's the 'When Christmas Comes' to down. We've obviously a lot funner. So now we're going to go into, um, 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.' Okay. So you've been— when you're doing these big, like, that's supposed to be nice big forte, you know, let it, let it come out. Your right hand though still needs to be nice and loose. Okay, then we're going to switch into Okay, so, um, that's going to quiet down again, and then we'll get back into the, into the thing here. So that's kind of a fun little— okay, just practice that. Okay, now we're going back to when Christmas Comes to Town. And so I go back and forth between these loud big sections like we just played and then this quiet section. Loud and soft and loud and soft. Okay, so here we go. By the way, I borrow my right hand on that section. You can go— that's fine. But I just hit this whole note, so I've got an extra hand here. And instead of doing this weird crossover here, I actually will bring my right hand down to help on this often. I just have to make sure I bend back for the next part. But anyway, I like that. So I helped again. So, um, on this section here, to get those notes just right, I know it's a C flat and a G flat and a C flat and a D flat and an E flat and an F and then an— a G flat and an A flat, right? There's a bunch of weird flats in there, C flats and G flats and stuff you don't really hit very often. In my mind, actually, I'm just playing a B scale, right? Except an F. So the F is the— is the only thing out of the riff. Then, okay, um, so then I, yeah, then I get up to a G, right? Go practice that. So I know that looks hard, what I just played there, but for some reason it's super easy in my brain. I just, right? Um, so you get your pretty big here, easy. So the right hand's just going to go F, G, B, F, G, B, F, G, F, G, right? And your right hand is going to go G, D, B, right? So It's really pretty easy. I'm just going— okay, not that hard. Practice it. At the end here, you're going to let this big, um, note ring out for a— basically until you get to this fermata. So then you release, and that's actually That's actually another part of— it's called the Spirit of the Season from Polar Express as well, and I just quote that there at the end for fun. But yeah, let that ring out. In the full instrumental version, there's a cello that's just, you know, hitting that, holding that out for me, and so I can do things a little better. But when you're on piano, hit it nice and deep and let it just stay there. So it says F. Right there. And then immediately play it after D. You're done. Okay, so when Christmas comes to town, um, let's see, sorry, Santa's bringing Christmas to town. What's it called? Yeah, Santa's bringing Christmas to town. Um, hope you enjoyed that and hope that was helpful. Okay, next song.
