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Here's a quick bonus! A number of members have asked for a lesson on some Christmas music and this is one of my favorite holiday songs to play. It's "Please Come Home for Christmas" by the Eagles.
At first glance the song has a lot of chords, and there are some tricky changes, but you will quickly see chord patterns that repeat themselves (like most songs), so once you learn it the first time you'll have it nailed for the rest of the song!
The song is in the key of "A" and it's in 6/8 time. So there's 6 beats per measure, and every eighth note gets a beat. You would verbally count it out like this:
ONE two three, FOUR five six - ONE two three, FOUR five six - ONE, two, three, FOUR five six (and so on...), with the emphasis on the ONE and FOUR.
You will notice some familiar chords in this song, as well as some new ones. Don't be scared by the new ones, they are actually great chords to learn and it should be fun to expand your chord vocabulary.
In fact, many of these are standard chord changes that you will find in a lot of blues type songs so they will probably sound familiar to you.
Below is the music chart for the song. If you've heard this song before then it should fall into place for you pretty quickly.
Lesson Goals:
♦ Learn the strumming pattern for this song in 6/8 time signature
♦ Learn the melody notes and incorporate them with the open chords
♦ Learn the bridge chords and then play the complete song
Here is the TAB for the main riff:
Above is the practice example for the strumming pattern. It is in 6/8 time signature and has a "waltz" feel.
Note: The emphasis when counting the beats is placed on the "1" and the "4".
Here is the music chart for the complete song:
Note: The top line in the above example is where you will play the main riff that you just learned. This line repeats twice during the verse lyrics, and then twice again instrumentaly before going to the bridge chords starting on the D minor chord.
The above illustrates the complete song. It simply repeats over and over. For the full lyrics there are many good sources online.
I hope you enjoy playing this song as much as I have over the years! Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.
