Please Come Home For Christmas // Guitar Lesson with Strumming & Play Along

Bells will be ringing.

Sad, sad news.

The Eagles have put together a great Christmas song here for us. It's got lots of chords and it's in a little bit of a different time. This song is in what we call six, eight time. So we're going to be counting to six for all of our strumming patterns. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. It's kind of of more like a waltz time.

So the intro to this song and the outro, this song is just single notes. Okay. It's usually played on the piano, but if you want an option for the guitar, you can just play the tenth fret, which is an A note, the fifth fret on the B string, which is an E note, the seventh fret on the B string which is an F sharp, and then the second fret on the B string which is a C sharp note. So it's.

And that's how the song starts and it's how the song ends. So before we get into all the different sections, let's talk about the strumming pattern for this song. So the most simplest is going to be six downs.

One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, 4, 5, 6. One, two, three, Four, five, six. One, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

And you can use that for the entire song if you want to. It'll completely work. I sometimes like bringing a little energy into the song, so I always like to give people options, especially if you want to push things and make them more challenging for you. The other is to make it slightly more aggressive by throwing some up strums in there. So it'd be 1, 2 and 3 and 4, 5 and 6 and 1, 2 and 3 and 4th, 5 and 6 and. Holy crap. What? Lauren? So it's going to be down, down, up, down, up, down, down, up, down, up. And we're going to be accenting the 1 and the 4 so it'll sound like this.

Can you hear that? 1, 2 and 3 and down, down, up, down, up.

So this would be just six.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 1, 2, 3.

Now here's the other strums. Ready?

1, 2, 3, 4,. 1, 2 and 3 and 4, 5 and 6 and 1, 2 and 3 and.

So if I were playing this song.

I'd probably keep the first verses pretty straightforward with just the six count. And then when we get to our bridge section, friends and friends and relations.

Send salutations.

You have the option of opening up the song and I think it's a really great moment for you. To open up the song at that point. So those are the two strumming options you guys pick whichever one works best for you. We're going to go through the structure of each section now, and then we'll get into our play along. Now, let's go over the chords we're going to use for this Eagles tune, because there are a lot of them. So I would consider this a little bit more of an intermediate sum, because there are going to be some bar chords in here, too. So we're going to have an A chord. Okay, very nice. We do have an A7 chord. And every once in a while, we have this A major chord, which looks very much like a D7 chord. Okay. It's just a little extra spice. You can leave it out if you want to, and we'll talk about that. But I just want to let you know, it is in the. In the song. The other chords we have, we have a D major chord, we have a B7 chord.

We have E major. We also have D minor later in the song, we also have a couple bar chords. We have F sharp minor, and unfortunately, we have a C sharp seven. Okay. Which is this really tricky bar chord up here that you guys might need to practice getting in and out of. Okay. It has a great sound to it. If you can't do the seven chord, if that's hard, you can always just do a regular C sharp bar chord. It'll sound just fine. It just won't have that bluesy seven sound like the C sharp seven. She sharp she shall she shouts by the seashore.

Well, now that I've learned how to talk again, the final chord would be an E7 chord. That's going to pop in every once in a while. So if you don't know some of these chords, pause the video right now, go back, figure out how to play some of them. Because we're going to get into the structure of this song, which changes from verse to verse and over the bridge. Now, if you want to follow along with my song notes, you can always go over to my website, laurenbateman.com I'll put a link in the description below for you guys to go check that out. So let's talk about this first verse. So everything in this song follows a 16 bar format. That means there's going to be 16 measures, all right. That we're going to be playing. And counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. We're going to have to do that 16 times. So fortunately, for these verse sections, we have the first, first eight Measures are the same for every single verse. Okay, that's great. And you can either do all this movement on the A chord for the first four measures or you could just play an A chord. Let me show you the difference. So this is the A chord, four measures. Ready?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Not bad. It'll work. Here it is with a little bit of movement.

So if you haven't learned some of these chords yet, this is a great opportunity to do it. Because to go from A to a major seven, it's just, it's a D7 chord, but just on different strings. All right. Everything D7's the bottom three strings. Alright. Move everything up one string and you've got that a major seven. And then for to go from a major seven to a seven, you just lift up the first finger. It's actually pretty easy to move around those chord changes. So that's nice. And then like I said, double D, double B7. And then this first verse ends. A D, A, F sharp minor, double B7, double E. Okay. So that's our first section, our first verse. The second verse starts out the same, okay. With the A and, and the d and the B7. We also end. The third line is a D, A F sharp minor. But the last line is a little bit different. It is B7, E7, A and A7. Okay. And then we come to our bridge section which does something totally different on the end. But let's talk about how we're going to get there. So we have double D, okay. Double D minor. Then we have A, E, A, A7. Okay. Then we have double D, double D minor, B7 twice. And then we're going to strum our E chord. Okay? And then we're going to get.

Going to pick individual notes of an E chord. So the timing of that is going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. One on strings 4, 4, 3, 2, 1. So that last line will sound like this.

2, 3, 4, 5,.

6. 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5, 6.

1, 2, 3rd, 4, 5, 6. 1, two, three, four, five, six.

And then you would start into your next verse. So let's do that one more time.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, 4, 5, 6.

One, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6.

Now, because the Eagles can never do anything simple, this third verse changes yet yet again. So we're starting off the same. We've got, you know, the a for the four measures, the double D, the B7. On the third line we have A major. And then we have that C7 bar chords or, sorry, C sharp seven. That's going to come in here as well as an F sharp minor to D. And then we have a bunch of split measures now on this last part of the verse. So it's going to be a 1, 2, 3, F sharp minor, 1, 2, 3, B 7, 1, 2, 3, E 7, 1, 2, 3. And then A for two measures, 1.

2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

1, 2, 3, 4th, 5, 6. And don't worry, I'm going to do a full playthrough and play through all these different sections for you guys. Just want to go through them one by one so you understand each section. And then we're going to put them all together. Now we have a solo section and. And it's the A, A major 7, A 7, A 7, D, D, B 7, B 7. No lyrics. And then it's basically repeating most of what we just played. We have the A major, the C sharp, C sharp 7.

F sharp minor, D minor. Okay, and then we have a splitting A measure with F sharp minor. And then we're going to strum once on these chords and B7, E7, A7. And on the very end of that we're going to be playing a D, D, A. Just single strums, a D, D, A.

So now that we've gone through all the sections, let's get through our play along so that you can see it all come together and hear how I would perform the song.

Bells will be ringing.

The sad, sad.

News.

Oh, to Christmas.

To have the.

Blues.

My baby is gone.

I have.

No friends.

Wish me greet.

Once again.

Crowds will be singing.

Silent night.

Christmas.

Carols by candlelight.

Please come home for Christmas.

Please come home for Christmas.

If not for Christmas.

By New Year's night.

Friends and relations.

Send salutations.

Sure as the stars shine above.

But this is Christmas.

Yeah.

Christmas, my dear.

Time of year to be with the one you love.

So.

Won'T you tell me.

You'Ll never roam.

Christmas and New Years.

We'Ll find you.

A home.

There'S no more sorrow.

There'S.

No more pain.

And I'll be happy, happy once again.

Solo.

Oh, there'll be no more sorrow.

No.

Grief or pain.

And I'll be happy Christmas once again.

Well, that one definitely is a doozy. And if you're looking for more great Christmas songs to play, you can check out my Christmas playlist down there. Or if you're interested in learning more Eagles tunes, you can check out my Eagles playlist up there.