Lauren Bateman’s YouTube guitar lesson teaches an easy way to play Elvis Presley’s "Blue Christmas." The instructor uses a capo on the 2nd fret to play the song in the key of E while avoiding a B barre chord, and covers a blues shuffle strumming pattern (triplet feel) used throughout. The lesson walks through the song form (verses, interlude, outro) and gives a bar-by-bar chord progression: primarily D, A, A7, with D7, G, and E appearing in turnaround spots; specific instructions for the second-verse ending and interlude are provided (stop/strum cues and repeated double-chord measures). Chord chart and extra resources are linked on the instructor’s website.
Chapters
Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. And I have my ugly Christmas sweater on because we're going to be doing a Christmas song here. We're going to get bluesy with Elvis Presley's Blue Christmas. So let's get into the guitar lesson.
So if you need the chord chart for this lesson, go to my website, laurenbateman.com I'll put a link in the description below. You're going to notice we have a capo on the second fret. So this song is usually played in the key of E major and we're still going to be playing in E major. But what I'm doing is I'm using the capo to eliminate that really difficult B bar chord. So the chords now that we'll be using for this song are going to be a D major, A major, A 7. We have G major and E major. So those are the chords we're going to be using instead of having to deal with that tricky B bar chord. So I made it easier for you. Awesome. So those are the chords that we're going to be dealing with. Now this song is a very simple form. The form is just the organization of the of the song. So we've got a couple verses, we've got an interlude, and then we kind of have like a little outro part here. So let's go through the overall structure of this song. Let's start with the verse. So we're going to. Actually, we'll start with the strumming here. So this is a blue Christmas and I cannot sing like Elvis at all. So I'm not even going to try. We have a blues shuffle. Okay. So it's a blue shuffle.
It's got a little more of a swing to it as opposed to straight up eighth note. So it's still down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. But instead of going 1 and 2 and 3. Hear that? It's very straight. You could do that, you know, if you're not in touch with your shuffle yet, you can just do a straight up and down. But if you want to do a shuffle, a shuffle is like more 1.
A2, A3, A4, A1, A2, A3, a4.
It has a triplet feel, so it'll be more like this.
So it's a one, a two, a.
Three, a four, a one, a two, a 3, a 4, a 1, a 2, a 3, a four, a 1, a 2, A 3, a 4.
So play whatever is comfortable for you. But we're going to be using that strumming pattern for the Entire, entire song. So now let's jump into our verse and talk about the chord progression. Hey, guys, real quick, don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already so that you'll see more lessons just like this one when I release them. Let's get into the verse. So the chord progression we're going to start off with in this verse. So we have two Ds, two As, followed by two A7s, two Ds, then followed by a D7, a D, A, a G and an E. We're kind of following a blues form here. And then at the very, very end, we're going to play double E, double A7. And we're going to do something interesting on that last A seven. So let's go through it. And we're just going to be doing the shuffle pattern. So here's what it's going to sound like. So it's going to be.
I'll have a blue.
Christmas without you.
Right?
And now we got a 7.
A 7 to the decod.
Now D7 declarations.
Of red on a green Christmas tree.
Won'T be the same to A seven.
Okay, so that second A seven, we're just gonna strum on the the one. Beat that down and we're gonna cut it off real quick. So the first A seven is one.
A two, a three, a four, and one.
I'll have a blue.
So after we finish that verse and that chord progression, all we're gonna do is we're gonna repeat the same thing over again. The only thing is there's a slight change on the very end of this second verse. So the chord progression starts the same. It's D, D, A, A. Okay, then a seven, A seven, dd, no change there. Same thing, D seven, D, G, E. But on this one, on the very end, we're doing a seven twice and then D twice. And on that last D, we're going to do the same thing. We're going to strum and stop. So that very last four chords of the second verse are a 7, 1.
A 2, a 3, a 4, a 1, a 2, a 3,. A 2, a 3, a 4th, a.
1, 2, 3, 4. Which takes us into our interlude and the very outro for this song. If you guys are enjoying this guitar lesson, make sure to give me a thumbs up as it helps YouTube show more of my videos to viewers. Just like you. Let's wrap up the song. So the next part of the song we have an interlude. So the interlude is 2 D's and 2 A's followed by double A 7 double D. And there's no singing over this part. And then we're just going to repeat that D7G E. So it'll be two D7s. Here we got.
You'll be doing all right with your Christmas of white and then it ends.
With like we just did on that second verse. But I'll have a blue, blue, blue Christmas we're going to do a 7 twice.
1, 2 bent a D.
And that one you can hold out and let it ring so that's Elvis Presley's Blue Christmas. I hope you guys really enjoyed that lesson. It's such a great classic Christmas song. Really has a lot of feel to it and his voice is just absolutely amazing. So don't forget to subscribe and give me a thumbs up on the video. YouTube's going to pop up a couple more videos over here. Go check those out and hopefully I'll see you guys in another lesson video.
