Jingly

This delightful and happy holiday tune is one of those multi-part pieces that gives you several options and flexibility for performance. It includes a vocal part that is unison and simple, as well as a ukulele part that only uses C and F chords, jingle bells that only use quarter notes, and an optional handbells part that only uses notes from the C major scale. The song is actually about jingle bells, so you really ought to use those at least. But since it also worked well for ukuleles and bells, we added them, too. Mix and match what works best for you. Parts for all three instrumentals have been extracted and are included in this issue.

The piece is in cut time, so the quarter notes are four to a bar. There is a drum set-up prior to the tune that helps jingle bells and ukuleles be ready for their entrances. Note that the jingle bells play on the backbeat of each bar until measure 21 at which point they switch to quarter notes played on every beat. Conversely, the ukulele starts by playing quarter notes on every beat, then switches over to the backbeats at measure 21.