Christmas Materials for Band Instruments
Holiday Melodies - unison with accompaniment
These are some of our favorite items to hand out to students each year. They are unison melodies for all instruments, with digital accompaniments.
They are great resources for students who want to play something for a family holiday gathering.
Part One has fifteen easy tunes that can be played using only the notes taught in SoundStart. They work great with beginners, who will practice like mad to learn these songs. Part One includes pages # 1 - 8, plus a fingering chart with all the notes used in Part One.
Part Two has seventeen more tunes, this time at the intermediate level, suitable for second year and up. Part Two includes pages # 9 - 17.
Both packages come as a pdf file with a score and a set of student parts.
Accompaniments can be downloaded from this page.
Christmas Quartets - four part harmony
These were done in response to students who said "six of us have been asked to play some Christmas music at church, but our band pieces don't sound that good with just a few of us."
They are simple four part arrangements of some of the most popular Christmas classics. Every instrument has the melody, plus any of the harmony parts that will fit on their instrument. For instance, trumpets have melody and part two, while alto saxes have melody plus parts two and three, and trombones have melody plus parts three and four.
Many different combinations are possible, from like or mixed instrument duets, trios, and quartets, to full band. They also work great for audience singalongs.
You will receive a .zip file. When opened, it will contain all 12 quartets.
Christmas Band Pieces - available from our Concert Band download page. $24 each.
Good King Wenceslas is a very easy arrangement playable by beginners by their first Christmas concert.
Christmas Overture and Hallelujah were designed to be the opener and closer for a Christmas concert, with a massed band of all students in the program. Although the arrangements are at a Grade 2 level, both pieces include parts for beginners which just use a few notes they learn early in the year. Parents of beginning students are always very impressed that their students are able to be part of these performances.