A Charlie Brown Christmas

I love the arrangement of Christmas Time is here, and O Tanenbaum (sp?). What child is this is interesting, Skating and Christmas is coming are more difficult than I enjoy.It’s a nostalgic book for me.

Did not Bing's "Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum" ever seem conspicuous when he saddled alongside he-who-is-both-man-and woman's-best-friend? I distinctly recall my father's rather conservative and languidly Bavarian response to Mr. Diamond Dogs, warning me over and over and over again never to wear eye make-up, let alone a purple parka. I tried to correct my father, "But father, he wears a cross as he sings. Look, he even wears a sports coat!" Of course, he could care less as he scowled, "Ahh! But's what's this peace-on-earth crap while he sings Little Drummer Boy?!?" He then proceeded to hit me in the head with a rack of lamb and ranted about the misunderstood merits of white phosphorous.Ever since then, it's been "Pa-Rum-Pum-Pum" and Vince just about nailed it, saving me the torture of having to sit through the likes of Danny Kaye's frightening smile and justifications for clandestine military actions like "Operation Northwoods." I was just fine with the piles of dust spewing from Pig Pen and the slipshod tannenbaum to the sounds of Piano. Drums. Bass. So simple. We thought we were safe. Fast forward to my millennial days as a father in my own right, and juggling pop-culture logic, and "playdates" and the ongoing search for cookware that is free from BPH, and arguing with my piano-playing daughter that what Justin Bieber did to this fine little tune was the worst of all abominations! Akin to a steaming bowl of bile and melted Necco Wafers!Was I to become like my father? Was there any Christmas magic that would save me from that young punk and his plastic death grip on my daughter and the rest of our nation's tweens? Did I have to tally up reasons for hatred? Or could I just spin it toward a time-tested trio that lays to waste the likes of Cream, Rush, and ZZ Top? I purchased Guaraldi's "Charlie Brown Christmas" for her, invoked the likes of the Archangel Gabriel, shook some maracas, brewed some ginger tea and voila! She's been tickling the ivories ever since, and the ox and the lamb keep time.When I see my father again, I shall say, "I have no gift to bring, but listen to this instead."Joyeux Noël to all the Beliebers out there.

I love the music even though most of it is above my skill level ... I'll work on the rhythms until get them. It's almost impossible to keep the book open and on the piano. I've got one of the little clips that assist with keeping the book open but a "comb" binding would be much appreciated.

If you are a good enough pianist that you can play the type of piano arrangements that are called "advanced" in the pop world (or equivalently, low-intermediate level in the classical piano world)....and you want the most authentic, close-to-the-original Vince Guaraldi piano solo arrangements that you can get, my advice is to go with "The Vince Guaraldi Collection" (ISBN-13: 978-0-634-03099-4), which I will hence refer to as the "VGC" book. Having said that, I also bought this book ("A Charlie Brown Christmas," ISBN-13 978-0-634-02979-0, which I will hence refer to as the "CBC" book) because it contained a song I wanted that was not in the VGC book (I wanted the song "Christmas is Coming"). It seems that all the other versions of the CBC book are some sort of severely dumbed-down "Easy Piano"/"Beginner"/"E-Z Play" etc. version...making this version of the CBC book the most authentic Christmas-themed Guaraldi tunes that you can get, for those songs that ARE NOT in the "Guaraldi Collection" book. For those songs that ARE in both books (such as the ever-popular "Linus and Lucy"), definitely go with the VGC book, because even this relatively advanced version of the CBC book does some shortening and slight dumbing-down compared to that better book. For example, in "Linus and Lucy," the CBC book version entirely omits one of the two 16-bar improv sections that are sandwiched in-between the sections with the familiar "Linus and Lucy" theme (it only has the second one), while the VGC book has both. That, plus the use of repeats/Da Capo shorten the CBC book version of "Linus and Lucy" down to four pages -- versus eight pages in the VGC book.

There are several reasons I love this book. For one, the songs are very familiar and are pleasing to play. These are instumental works so you get to play it the way it is performed, instead or incorporating the melody into the right-hand piano parts. The chord progressions are very interesting (flat 9th chords, flat 5th, etc.) especially the way they are voiced. You can see an example at the sheet music plus web site. There is another version of this book with parts that are easier to play. I have only seen one sample page from that book (Linus and Lucy) and in the other book it is played in C major and doesn't have the left-hand rhythmic anticipations (first note begins an eight note early) while this book has the song in E-flat, which is a little harder to play but sounds richer. I have a QRS player piano roll of Linus and Lucy and I noticed that it matches the Christas CD better. The song on the CD goes through the main part of the song three times with two swinging (hard to play) refrains. The two refrains are a little different, with the second one being more dissonant than the first. The book documents only the second. The bass line for the refrains are simple walking quarter notes while the piano roll has a rag-time style alternating eight note bass notes and chords. This is fine by me because this is plenty hard to play as it is (triplets over quarter notes, etc.).At any rate, check out the sample at Sheet Music Plus to see if the difficulty matches you ability. If so, this is a great purchase.

The book is exactly as the one I bought for my other place in a different country many years ago.Love the music.

Rhythmically tricky in some places (but then I have a classical background and havent played much jazz) - but totally true to the soundtrack of the Christmas Charlie Brown classic. Love it - would recommend.

For the most part, this book is very accurate to the recordings. Often times music books for popular music aren't very accurate or for some reason, write the music out in different keys, but this is true to the original recordings. Some sections, however, are omitted, like the swing section in Christmas is Coming is not offered which is too bad.

Ich bin ein Fan und spiele zur Weihnachtszeit immer auf dem Fügel oder Synthesizer. Kaufempfehlung

Great book! Purchased for a level two pianist and there’s some easier songs in here and some songs to grow into. Beautiful book.

Excellent arrangements of some standards plus Guaraldi’s own classics.