Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Guitar Lesson & Play Along

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. And we're going to be doing a Christmas classic called have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. Now, the version we're going to be doing here is based on the Judy Garland version. So what we're going to have is we will have a lot of open chords. There is one bar chord on the bridge that we'll talk about when we get there. So we have an A minor chord, you know, nice open chord, A minor. We have a C chord. We have D, D minor, we have G, we have D, we have E major, and we have B7. Okay, so that. That's probably the trickiest of the open chords. Now we're coming from an A minor going into the B7. So you can use a pivot point, which is your middle finger. Your middle finger is not going to move at all to get into B7. So this is A minor. I'm going to move my second finger up, put my pinky down on the second fret of the first string, and then move my finger up to the first fret of the fourth string. And I've got B7. So you can see as I go in between, I don't have to move that middle finger. So that might be helpful working on that transition. Unfortunately, it only comes in once in the verses. So let's start off with our strumming pattern. I'm going to give you two options. One is the easier option, and. And the other one just has a little spice that I think sounds really nice with this song.

So let's just start with the. The basic strum. Okay, so we've got G. All right, we'll play it on a G chord, and it's going to be 1, 2, and 3, 4. And so down, down, up, down, down, up.

One, two, and.

One, two, and three, four. And now with this strumming pattern, for a lot of this song, the chords are only going to be two beats, which means we're going to do a down, down, up on the first chord, and we're going to do down, down, up on the second chord. So for this intro, the chord progression is G, E minor, A minor, and D. All right? So each one of those chords is going to get a down, down, up. So let's give that a try starting with the G chord. So we got 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, and 3, 4. And 1, 2, and 3,4. On your own.

One more time.

Okay? And you're going to keep a nice. That's the great thing about this song is it's a nice Even pace song. We don't have to go super, super fast. We can keep things nice and slow. Now, if you feel like you have enough time between your chord changes to add an extra strum, we could add in one little 16th note, which is going to be 1, 2, and a 3, 4, and a. So it's going to be down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up. And that's going to sound like this, just on the G chord. So we got 1, 2, and a 3, 4, and a. Down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up.

Okay, now if I put it over the chord progression. If you want to keep practicing the first strum, go right ahead. Practice that with me. If you want to try this other strum, let's give it a try now. So it's going to be 1, 2, and a 3, 4, and a 1, 2, and a 3th, 4, and a 1, two, and a three. On your own. Ready?

One more time. Down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down. All right, and that's the strumming pattern we're going to use throughout the song. Now, if you feel like your hand starts embellishing once it gets into the rhythm, that's totally fine too. But you can use this strumming pattern from the beginning to the end of this song. So now let's get into our verse section of the song. So let's talk about the verse section of the song. Song. The majority of the song is verses. There's three of them, and they each have their own unique way of ending. But the beginning part is basically the same. So the chord progressions, we have a lot of split measures. So it's starting out just the way the intro did. G, E minor, A minor, D. Okay, and we're going to play that three times in a row. And then it's basically the endings that are going to change. So at the very end of the first verse, we're going to have B7.

E major.

A and then D. And all of the chords in the first verse are going to be split measures. Okay. So everything's going to be two beats. And again, if you need help, you can always follow along with the notes on my website, laurenbatement.com as well. So that is the first verse. The second verse, where things change is that at the very end, instead of it being G, E minor, A minor D, we're going to switch to the B7. So it's going to be G, E minor, A minor, B7. And then we're going to have our first full measures, we're going to have a full measure of E minor and a full measure of G. All right, so let me play through these first two verses because then we're going to jump into the bridge and then we'll talk about the third verse at the end. All right? And I will play through the entire song at the end for you as well to practice with. So let's start with the first verse, okay? So you can hear the differences between the two. Pick whichever strumming pattern you want. I'll start with the simple strumming. Ready? So we're gonna do down, down, up, starting at the verse. Ready? And.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Let your heart be light.

Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas make the old tired game.

From now on our troubles will be miles away.

And then we change keys and we hit our C chord on the bridge. Now a note, an important note that I want. If some of you might have noticed, when I was playing this song, I was using the brighter G chord, the four finger G chord, because for some people, it's easier to change into a D chord. And we're doing a lot of G to D in this song. So if you like that, there's nothing wrong with the regular G chord. My muscle memory just was going from this G and then obviously the middle finger again pivots into the D chord. So I just wanted to make a mention of that because I saw my muscle memory was doing that and I wanted to share that little tip with you. All right, now the bridge section, this is where we were playing totally different notes. Okay? This is. You can hear the music's going to change dramatically here in the bridge section. So we have our first C chord, and instead of split measures, now we have full measure. So it's a full measure of C, a full measure of B minor. Okay? That's our first bar chord. And if you're not great with bar chords, you can play a simplified version of B, which is the first, second, third fingers on the second fret of the first string, third fret of the second string, and then fourth fret of the third string. And if you're able to use all four fingers, you can play it this way. This way you've got, you know, a little bit of a fuller sound. But if not, little three finger version. It's only in the song twice in this bridge section. So whatever works for you. You choose that. All right, then we got A minor, G, E minor, B Minor. And then we have a slightly different timing here on the bridge. All right, we're going to have a D chord for just one beat and then we're going to have an A chord.

For three beats. All right, so it's going to be.

Faithful friends who are dear to us Gather near to us.

Okay, so changes over the lyrics. Near to us once more as my voice correct. Sorry, I'm still getting over a bit of a head cold here. But you can hear the timing. It's just one strum on the D and then you could just do three strums on the A. All right, so let's try that bridge section together. Everything is going to be full measures except that one part with the D and the A. All right, so here we go. So we got one, two, here we go.

And here we are as in olden days.

Happy golden days of yore.

Faithful friends who are dear to us.

Gather near to us once more.

And then we have our last verse. Okay, now our last verse is exactly the same as the second verse, except we have a little extra line. All right, so we have have yourself C to A minor. And then we're going to hold Merry little Christmas now. So we're just adding one extra line with C and A minor splitting a measure. We're holding our D and then we're holding our G. So what I'm going to do, now that I've gone through all the parts step by step, I'm going to play through from the beginning to the end. I apologize for my voice. I'm going to do the best I can with this head cold. But we're going to take it from the top. And let's get started. I'm going to use the down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up. But if you find the down, down, up easier and it gives you enough time to switch your chords, use that instead. Okay, so we got 1, 2, 3, 4.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Let your heart be light.

Next year all your troubles will be out of sight.

We'll have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Make the yuletide gay.

From now on our troubles will be miles away.

Well, here we are as in olden days.

Happy golden days of the old.

Faithful friends who are dear to us.

Gather near to us once more.

Someday soon we all will be together.

If.

The fates allow.

Hang a ship Shining star upon the highest bound.

And have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Now.

And if you are feeling the holiday cheer and holiday season Go check out out my Christmas playlist right over there. Where you can find other fun songs to learn this holiday season.