Give your friends and family the gift of music this Noel with Declan Zapala’s colourful fingerstyle arrangement of a cheerful festive favourite!
ABILITY RATING Moderate ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
Info https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk Will improve your… Knowledge of traditional Welsh music Key D major Tempo 108 bpm Pick harmonics Two and three-part harmony playing
This month’s classical piece comes in the form of the Christmas carol Deck The Halls, also known by its alternative title ‘Tis The Season. The melody of the carol is from the traditional Welsh winter song Nos Galan (New Year’s Eve) which dates back to the Renaissance and was first published in 1794. It later became synonymous with Christmas when English lyrics were written to the melody by the Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant in 1862.
The first of the three verses, which makes reference to Christmas, goes as thus:
Deck the hall with boughs of holly, Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!
‘Tis the season to be jolly:
Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!
Fill the meadcup, drain the barrel, Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!
Troul the ancient Christmas carol. Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!
The entire melody of the carol fits into this single verse and is then repeated note-for-note throughout the following two verses. While the human singing voice has the luxury of being able to change words to create variation between verses, the humble guitar has no such luxuries afforded it, since we can only play the notes. To keep things interesting for us I have used this carol as an opportunity to explore the Theme and Variations compositional approach using a melody and accompaniment texture. I have treated the above Verse 1 as the ‘Theme’ and have then composed three variations of increasing density. The main theme can be played by a beginner since it is a stripped -back two-part harmony but we move into a more intermediate setting with Variation 1 as it brings in some ‘chunkier’ chords and adds more movement in the accompaniment voice. Variation 2 involves some advanced plucking control as the accompaniment voice is made up entirely of 12th-fret picking hand harmonics. This technique is explained at the start of the accompanying video so be sure to check that out first.
The final variation
