Santa Claus Is Coming To Town & He’s Bringing Some Easy Music Theory With Him…

Here is the transcript of the video so you can follow along:

Good morning. This is Duane and Merry Christmas to you. Did you know that often, if you learn the first eight measures of a song, you have automatically learned three quarters of a song? It’s true and there’s many many many popular songs and folk songs that are like that. So Santa Claus Is Coming To Town & He’s Bringing Some Easy Music Theory With Him! Let me just demonstrate.. Let me play the song. [music 00:25]

Okay. That was eight bars, eight measures. Okay? Now, the next eight bars feels like this. [music 00:40] Does that sound familiar? Yeah. It’s exactly the same as the first eight bars, so that would be section B of the song. So, we have section A, and then section B. They’re both eight bars long. Okay? So, by learning the first eight measures, you also learned, obviously, the second eight measures.

Now, the third section of a song is usually a bridge, and we call that section B, and it is here too. [music 01:12] And then, that was eight bars, and now, guess what? [music 01:27] The same eight bars, okay? So, if you learn the first eight bars, you know the second eight bars, and you know the final eight bars. Now, of course, that’s not always true but I want you to look for songs that are laid out like that. Sometimes, it’s twelve bars … twelve, twelve, and then a bridge, and then twelve more, but in any case, by learning one quarter of the song, you’ve learned three quarters.

Now, that should be an encouragement to anyone who struggles with memorizing music or learning music because it happens in all kinds of music, and it happens really really often. That’s why it’s to your advantage to learn music theory so that you know things like that, and you look for them. Okay? Now, I’m just going to play it through the- I just play it through the melody.

Notice, the lowest note was B. We’re in the key of C, and the lowest note of the melody was B and the highest note was E, so everything is … those are the parameters. Those are the fences that lock the song in, okay, and I think the chords are simple too. I hadn’t thought about it, but let me just play them. [music 02:38] That’s the C chord. [music 02:42] F chord … C chord … F … F Minor, C. Here you can play C … A minor … D minor … G, C.
[music 02:57] Now, the bridge goes like this. [music 03:10] I forgot how it went. [music 03:28] Okay, so the first chord is C. The next chord is F. The next chord is F minor, back to C. F … F Minor. So far, we just had three chords. C … A minor … D minor … G, C. Then, you have kind of a bri- not a bridge, but a break there before it goes on to the next measure. If I was playing it, I might do [something 04:03] this. [music 04:03]

I think I better practice that. I hadn’t played that in years, but you see, it’s very very simple. The bridge, we just went through the chords in the A section, but the bridge is … [music 04:54] G minor seventh, C seventh … F. If you want to use the F sharp diminish chord as a transition chord, that would be nice. G minor … C seventh, F … A, that’s A minor … D seventh, G … G sharp diminished … A minor … D seventh … and then G. Back to C … and so on. Okay?

So, that was kind of a walk through of the chords in Santa Claus is Coming to Town, but more than that, I hope you get the point that if you learn eight measures of a song, you often have three quarters of the song learned, so all you got to do then is learn the bridge. Okay. That’s it for today and if you enjoy this kind of thing, come on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up for our free newsletter. It’s loaded with all kinds of stuff like this. Okay … so thanks for being with me and we’ll see you tomorrow, and hopefully my voice will be working a little better tomorrow. There’s snow outside on the ground, by the way, and I think I have a Christmas cold, so we’ll see you tomorrow. Bye bye for now.

Here is the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT4NzSWB76E&feature=youtu.be
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