A short, beginner-focused YouTube guitar lesson by Lauren Bateman teaching how to play "Jingle Bells." Lauren presents the song as an easy, quick-to-learn Christmas tune, gives a beginner-friendly F major7 workaround for a full F barre chord, and demonstrates verse and chorus chord progressions and three strumming options (simple whole/4-downs, a 1-2-3-and-4 pattern with down/up, and a syncopated down-down-up up-down-up). The chorus introduces a D major chord; playable chords in the lesson are C, F (or Fmaj7), G, and D. Lauren also mentions a historical note that Jingle Bells was written circa 1850 and references Medford, Massachusetts as a claimed origin. The video includes a playthrough/demo and closing encouragement to practice and subscribe.
Questions this video answers
C, F (or F major7 as an easy alternative), G, and D major.
Use an F major7 voiced like a three-finger C-shape with fingers on the 3rd and 2nd strings (instead of a full barre F).
(1) Four down (or whole-note) strums; (2) a 1-2-3-&-4 pattern with down/down/down/up/down/up; (3) a syncopated pattern: down, down, up, up, down, up (counted 1, 2 & 3, 4 &).
She states the song was written in 1850.
Chapters
Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. I'm so excited because we're gonna be doing another Christmas song. You can see my dad got me another ugly Christmas sweater this year. So I'm gonna do another Christmas song and this one's really cool. It's Jingle Bells. Let's get into the guitar lesson.
And just so you know, this isn't just any ordinary Christmas sweater. Thanks, Dan. I really excited to do this Christmas song with you guys because I grew up in Medford, Massachusetts and that's supposedly where Jingle Bells was written in the mid-1800s. It also has other great classics like over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's House. I used to drive by grandmother's house all the time. Again, this is a very simple Christmas song. So if you're looking something you're absolute beginner looking for something fun, easy, quick to pick up. Jingle Bells is a great beginner Christmas song. We're working with three chords here. Okay. We're working with the circle major chord. We are working with a G major chord, and we're also working with an F chord. Now, I know an F chord is typically a bar chord, but if you're an absolute beginner, I have an easy fix for you that I'm going to throw up here. Okay. The easy fix is an F major 7 chord. So if you know a full bar chord, awesome. Do it. If you're an absolute beginner, it looks like our three fingered C chord here. All right. Except instead of the second and third fingers being on the fifth and fourth strings, instead they're on the third and second strings. It's not going to sound as nice as the full bar chord, but it'll get you through this song and it makes for a really nice, easy chord change between C and F major 7. So if you're an absolute beginner, give that a try and it'll probably help you learn this song much faster. So let's get into our verse and what strumming patterns we're going to use on this song. Hey guys, real quick. I really hope you're enjoying this lesson. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button so that you know when I release more videos just like this one on YouTube. So let's talk about the chord progression we're going to use for this lesson. All right. It does repeat. So we've got a C major chord three times in a row followed by an F major chord. Then we have F again, G, G, C. And then it just repeats that all the way through. So the easiest Way to strum this would be to just do four down strums. If you're an absolute beginner, that's what I would recommend. Or even do whole note strumming, that would be the absolute easiest. Dashing through the snow in a one horse open sleigh or you can do four strums. 1, 2, a 1, 2, 3, 4. Dashing through the snow in a one horse open sleigh O' er the fields.
We go Laughing all the way.
So that's kind of a peppy song. You could slow it down if you want to, but I'm going to play it in a peppy version. So that's the absolute easiest way to do this. And you can always slow down the timing. Second strumming pattern we're going to use is going to be 1, 2, 3 and 4. And so it'd be 1, 2, 3 and four. And 1, 2, 3 and 4. And down, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, up. Very simple strumming patterns. The one that I like the most is going to be this last one. But it's also the most difficult strumming pattern because it's so syncopated. So if you are an early stage beginner, it might be difficult for you to do this, but if you're a little bit more late beginner intermediate, this should be fine for you to play. We're going to be doing the down, down, up, up, down, up pattern. So it's going to be 1, 2 and M4 and 1, 2 and M4 and down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up. Dashing through the snow in a one horse open sleigh o' er the.
In all the way.
You can see that way that time I did it a little bit slower, but you can pick up the speed.
You can make it a peppy Jingle bells or you can make it a slow jingle Bells. Whatever you guys want. Hey, guys, I hope you're enjoying this Jingle Bells tutorial. Don't forget to give me a thumbs up and like the video this way. YouTube shows more of my videos to users just like you. Let's get back into the video. Let's talk about the chord progression in this chorus. I actually see we have an introduction of another chord here. We actually have a D major chord popping in. All right, so all the chords you would need C, F, G, D major to play this song. We're going to have four measures in this chorus of C. Then we have F, C, D, G. Then we're going to repeat again four Measures of C. A measure of F. A measure of C. This says a measure of G, but I think I'm going to play two measures of G on this and then a measure of C. You'll see when we get to the end of this. So let me do a playthrough for you guys. The song was written in 1850, so I don't think there's any copyrights on Jingle Bells. We'll find out. All right, here we go. Starting from the top. So we got 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4. Dashing through the snow In a one.
Horse open sleigh O' er the fields we go Laughing all the way Bells on Baptist ring Making spirits bright what fun it is Laugh and sing a sleighing song tonight oh, jingle bells, jingle bells Jingle all the way oh, what fun it is to ride One horse open sleigh Jingle bells, jingle bells Jingle all the way oh, fun it is to ride In a wild open sleigh.
So there you go. So you can see at the end, I added the extra G because I was extending out that really nice one horse open slice. You guys can do that if you want to, but that gives you guys an idea for a tempo and a pace for this song. If the tempo's too fast, just slow it down. You don't have to play a peppy Jingle Bells. You can play a slow Jingle Bells. It doesn't matter to me. Whatever suits your fancy. I hope you guys have a lovely, lovely Christmas. Practice hard. YouTube's gonna pop up some more videos over here. I'll put a playlist of my other Christmas songs down there if you want to go check those out for the Christmas season. And I'll see you guys hopefully soon in another lesson video.
