About these guitar chord arrangements

The arrangements on this page are intended primarily for guitar. They are also appropriate for other "strummable" stringed instruments like ukulele. Many of these arrangements are significantly simpler than the average piano chordal arrangement, primarily because the chords have been reduced—nevertheless they sound balanced and complete, even when played on piano. (Chord reduction is explained below.)

Transposing the chords to any key

As you'll see, with a simple copy and paste, you can easily change the key of any of these carols with Key Switch.

If you like learning music by ear, check out Transcribe! It's an extremely useful tool that let's you slow down music, so you can play along, or to make it easier to figure it out.

Piano arrangements

Complex piano arrangements are truly lovely, but they don't necessarily translate into good guitar material. Often it's not possible to create a smooth guitar performance out of a piano arrangement that's abundant in chords. Even advanced guitarists struggle when trying to handle a piano arrangement that changes chords every beat (well this may not be a stumbling point for jazz style arrangements, but it's definitely problematic if you're in pursuit of folk-style sound.)

Chord reduction

Chord reduction is an important principle when arranging music for guitar. Sometimes it's a requirement, particularly when the goal is to create a simple, ringing, folk-style strumming accompaniment. This is definitely the case with certain carols. The trick is to identify and retain the essential chords, and eliminate those of lesser importance, without robbing the song of its characteristic harmonic content.

This collection of arrangements should sound fine on piano, despite the intended chord reductions. Certain carols are practically un-guitarable, but persistence and creativity usually prevail.

How to transpose these arrangements to fit your voice or your instrument

You can transpose any of these carols with Key Switch, and you can even transpose chords to the universal chordal parlance of Roman numbering.

"O Holy Night" and "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" are sample songs available within Key Switch. To transpose them just run Key Switch, choose the song you want from the Sample Song menu, and click a new key from the key picker. Simple as that!

To transpose a song found online, like the carols on this page, just copy the song, paste it into a "new song" window in Key Switch, set the initial key, then transpose. Read more about using Key Switch.

Saving your transposition while retaining the proper chord/lyric alignment

You can save transpositions that you've created with Key Switch. Just copy the transposed song from Key Switch, paste it into a document on your computer, and save. And make sure the song is still set in a monospaced font.

The importance of monospaced fonts in song sheets

The carols here are displayed with the Courier font, a monospaced font. This is to ensure that the chords and lyrics align properly. If you apply a variable-spaced font (most fonts are variable-spaced) the chord/lyric alignment will be compromised. So it's important to check your song when ever you've copied it from Key Switch and pasted into a document and make sure it's in a monospaced font. Read more about using monospaced fonts with Key Switch.

It's possible, after copying and pasting from Key Switch, that your song may display in a variable-spaced font; sometimes this switch can occur "automatically", and you may notice that the chord/lyric alignment is off. The solution is simple. Select the song and choose a monospaced font, like Courier or Monaco—any monospaced font will do. (Always to use a monospaced font with the arrangements on this page... or be prepared to manually re-space the chords whenever you choose a new variable spaced font.)

There are some an exceptions to this general rule. For instance, if you created a song sheet using a variable-spaced font, like Verdana , then after using KeySwitch, and after copying and pasting the song to a document, make sure the font is set to Verdana. With any other font you're likely to find chord/lyric alignment issues.