Jingle Bells, you'll love the way we jazzed it up!

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Jingle Bells Jazz Piano Tutorial
In this lesson we introduce the tune Jingle Bells and explore the core pillars of the harmony before reharmonising and arranging the tune.

Click the link above to download a full transcription of the arrangment and an annotated lead sheet which shows the original chord changes in black and colour-coded reharmonisations and chord substitutions.

Inner Voice Movement
A very simple but effective device for reharmonising Christmas songs is to use inner voice movement. This is particularly effective when we have the same chord type over multiple bars, for example the first 3 bars of Gmaj7.

We can use the inner voice of 5, to #5, to 6 and this adds additional colour and tension to an extended period of a single chord type.

Triads & Passing Chords
We start by arranging the tune using simple triad voicings in our left hand. This allows us to clearly visualise the core harmonic pillars of the tune which are the 1, 4, & 5 chords.

We then gradually layer our reharmonisations, start with simple 25 approach and passing chords and place these before the core chord changes.

We touch upon some more advanced reharmonisation principles such as introducing the 3 and 6 chords and how to experiment with tritone substitutes.

00:00 Performance & Introduction
04:38 Inner Voices Over Gmaj7
08:25 Passing Chords Based On 25s
14:28 Diatonic Reharmonisations
18:28 Inner Voices, 3625s, & Tritone Subs
24:20 Voicings Recap & Summary

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