This month I wanted to try learning the piano basics of a simplified Christmas song. I started going through our copy of Hymns Made Easy and settled on “Joy To The World” ( #56 in this PDF version ). It met all of the criteria I was looking for:
- A well known Christmas song
- No sharps
- No flats
- Looked relatively easy
I should add that I briefly took piano lessons as a kid. About the only thing I remember from that period today is “Every Good Boy Does Fine”.
After a couple of days I can now mostly play the right hand of the simplified version version of “Joy To the World”. The sound is very basic, but it is close enough that you’d probably recognize the tune.
While anyone with even moderate piano skills would laugh at how basic this version is, I found it satisfying to learn. There are some patterns in the song that my fingers like.
I totally cheated to learn this song. I can’t tell you what the notes are, instead I learned the pattern for playing them. This isn’t a good long term approach, but that wasn’t my goal.
Thank you my wife and oldest daughter who were kind enough to answer my questions and correct my mistakes.
We are still early enough in the Christmas season that I’m going to try another song.