Everybody's Popular Christmas Songs for Guitar, Book 1: Elementary Guitar Book

The arrangements here avoid the trap of oversimplifying holiday favorites into lifeless versions. Instead, Groeber and Hoge preserve the melodic character and harmonic color that makes these songs recognizable and rewarding, all while staying true to what elementary students can actually execute. Your December concert will sound genuinely musical, not like an exercise in survival.

These arrangements capture the warmth and familiarity of holiday classics while keeping the guitar's natural sound front and center. There's a gentleness to the writing that feels appropriate for the season without ever becoming saccharine or thin.

Elementary guitar students ready to play complete pieces beyond single-note exercises, and teachers looking for holiday recital material that spans a range of technical levels within Book 1. Directors programming December concerts will find solos and duets that let multiple students perform without requiring advanced sight-reading.

• Record yourself playing the duet parts separately so students can hear both voices during rehearsal; this clarifies voicing and prevents the second guitar from getting swallowed.
• Map out the finger position shifts before full rehearsal to reduce stumbling in performance; mark the page if a shift happens quickly.
• Balance the melody with the accompaniment voice by having the student playing the secondary part practice at slightly reduced volume during ensemble run-throughs.
• Use the step-by-step correlation to the method book as a diagnostic; if a student struggles with a particular passage, return to the specific lesson where that technique was introduced.

Slot these into your December or January concert as a full holiday segment, mixing solos and duets so different students get performance time. The duets work especially well as ensemble pieces that build community during what can be a hectic time of year. You can also assign individual pieces as practice material once students reach the corresponding step in the method book, turning daily lessons into a performance goal with real stakes.

• Reading and executing single-line melodies in first position
• Playing simple harmonic accompaniment patterns
• Coordinating two independent guitar parts in ensemble
• Maintaining consistent tempo while managing fingering changes
• Recognizing how harmonic motion supports melodic contour