Christmas Lead Sheets For Teens

I have a studio full of teenagers so for a piano teacher that means I don't hear "Jingle Bells" 15 times every day in December. Believe me, there have been years when that was the case! With older students I enjoy taking the opportunity to teach them how to read lead sheets at Christmas time. We keep it quite simple, but with some flowing left hand patterns they can easily have a number of carols prepared that sound sophisticated and polished.

Typically, our "go-to" left hand pattern is this one (sometimes with some variations or simplifications):

Often we'll add some decorations in the right hand, like arpeggios and mordents. The end product sounds more difficult than it is (but we like to keep that a secret). Most importantly, the students develop confidence and comfort reading simple lead sheets.

I have put together a little collection of six traditional carols in lead sheet format. I put them all in C Major or a minor so I could play them on my harp too. Just click the link below to download the pdf from my dropbox. You can print any pages you like or save the whole pdf on your iPad (I just email the file to myself and click "open in iBook").

Christmas Carol Lead Sheet Collection