How to Play Your First Christmas Song on Guitar with St. Nick

Happy holidaze! As promised in the video this article accompanies (link above), here are the tabs that’ll help you master the timeless Christmas melody that is the ancient, traditional Welsh carol, “Deck the Halls.” First up, here’s the F major scale that is the foundation of the classic carol’s melody line.

FIGURE 1: F MAJOR SCALE—one octave played in the open position.

As mentioned in the video — from lowest to highest, the notes in the F major scale are: F, G, A, Bb, C, D, and E.

THE FIVE SECTIONS OF “DECK THE HALLS”

For the sake of simplicity, we’ve broken the melody we’re going to learn into five (5) bite-size sections. And, as luck would have it, each of these sections is exactly two bars long. Here are tabs of the five sections covered in the video.

Section 1

Section 2

In case you’re wondering about the second-to-last note in this section (because it’s not in the F major scale pattern shown in FIGURE 1), let me quickly explain. That note is an E, which is the seventh note in the F major scale — it’s just being played an octave lower. Make sense?

Section 3

Section 4

As mentioned in the video, the second note in section four is the only time our melody line leaves the sanctity of the F major scale. The note being played here is a B natural as opposed to the Bb that’s the fourth note in the scale, which means it’s a half-step or semitone higher. For this reason, it is sometimes called a raised or augmented fourth. By the same logic, this note might also be referred to as a diminished or flattened fifth, as it’s a half-step below the fifth note of the scale. Call it what you will: it sounds really good here!

Section 5

PIECING THE SECTIONS TOGETHER

Once you’ve mastered all five sections, this is how to combine them to play the 16-bar melody in this lesson:

SECTION 1 > SECTION 2 > SECTION 1 > SECTION 2 >

SECTION 3 > SECTION 5 > SECTION 1 > SECTION 5

Have fun with this one!
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