Want to learn to play Jingle Bells on the piano? You’ve come to the right place!
Jingle Bells is a traditional Christmas song of American origin, written by composer James Lord Pierpont in 1857, on the occasion of Thanksgiving of that year.
The song was first published in 1889 by Edison Records.
Today, Jingle Bells is one of the most popular Christmas songs in the world. On December 24 and 25, it is one of the most popular pieces of music played by pianists to brighten up the family atmosphere.
In this article, we propose you to learn how to play Jingle Bells on the piano through a tutorial describing the notes to be played for each hand and tutorial videos.
Bonus: you can also learn this song at your own pace on our piano learning application La Touche Musicale.
Bonus : you can also learn to play this song at your own pace on our interactive piano learning app La Touche Musicale.
Free download: >> >> The guide to learn 10 easy piano pieces.
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To be able to play Jingle Bells, you must already know how to find your way around a piano keyboard. In the same way as we did for our tutorials dedicated to learning Greensleeves on the piano and All I Want for Christmas piano notes, this first part will be devoted to reviewing the basics concerning the identification of notes on a piano.
Let’s start by recapitulating the names of the notes on a keyboard. The image below shows the piano keys and their different notes (C, D, E, F, G, A, B) to help you find your way around the keyboard:
The name of the notes on a piano keyboard.
Looking at the picture above, you can see that each part is made of 7 white keys. Once you get to the eighth, a new section of 7 white keys starts again, which reproduces exactly the same notes in the same order. To identify your position on the piano, you can use the black notes. For example, you’ll notice that the note C comes back every time you come just before the group of two black notes.
Now that you know how to find your position on a keyboard, we can start learning Jingle Bells on the piano.
If you are interested in learning easy music with piano notes, you might like our article about piano songs with letters.
Before we get to the heart of the matter and see all the notes to play on the piano, we will start by identifying the first note of Jingle Bells on the keyboard.
To start playing this song, place one finger of your right hand on the E note in the middle of the piano keyboard.
E is the first note of the right hand in the song Jingle Bells on piano.
Once you have identified the first note E of the right hand, you will have to play all the notes of this same hand one after the other. Play the following sequence of notes:
G – D – E – F – F – F – E – E – E – D – D – E – D – G – E – E – E – E – E – G – D – E – F – F – F – E – E – E – G – G – F – D.
This sequence of notes corresponds to the whole right hand of Jingle Bells played on the piano. Repeat it over and over again so that you can master it.
Jingle Bells on the piano: the notes of the right hand.
So that you can respect the beats of each note of the right hand and the rhythm of Jingle Bells on the piano, you can watch the following video tutorial: [Note: you must remain pressed on the key while the note is on it on the virtual piano] :
To learn how to play the right hand of the song quickly, we recommend that you repeat the sequence of notes several times in a row. You will find that after a few minutes of repeating this sequence, your playing will become more and more fluid. You will then be able to play the entire right hand on the piano.
Now that you know this part of the famous poem, let’s talk about the notes to play with the left hand!
La Touche Musicale app waits for you to play the right note with your right hand on your piano before moving on to the next one.
As for the right hand, before playing all the notes of Jingle Bells with the left hand, we will have to identify the first note. The left hand of the Christmas song starts with the note G :
G is the first note of the left hand in the song Jingle Bells.
Once you have managed to find the first note G of the song, we will play the whole set of left hand notes one after the other:
G – G – G – G – G – G – A – A – B – B – C – G – G – G – G – G – G – A – A – B – B – C – C – G – C – G+C – C – G – B – G – C – G – F# – G – C – G – C – G – C – G+C – C – G – B – G – C – G – G – G – G – G – A – B – C.
This succession of notes corresponds to the whole melody of Jingle Bells played with the left hand on the piano.
We advise you to learn it by heart to accompany the right hand.
Jingle Bells on the piano: the notes of the left hand.
In addition to the notes to play, we have prepared for you, as for the right hand, a video tutorial that will allow you to respect the beats, rhythms and bars of Jingle Bells on the piano.
The La Touche Musicale app waits for you to play the correct note with your left hand on your piano before moving on to the next.
Congratulations! You now know how to play Jingle Bells with two separate hands! But that’s not the end of it, far from it… Now you have to learn to play the song with both hands at the same time on the piano keyboard.
Hand dissociation is one of the most difficult tasks for a beginner pianist. Indeed, it requires our brain to perform two simultaneous tasks with precision and rhythm.
That’s why this Jingle Bells tutorial is broken down into 3 parts: first the right hand, then the left hand, and finally both but at the same time.
The objective of the first two parts was to make you know by heart the notes of both hands independently.
Now we have to coordinate them so that the melody (right hand) and the accompaniment (left hand) can be played at the same time.
As explained before, there are some techniques and tricks to learn how to play both hands at the same time on the piano.
You can for example start to play each hand independently in order to start on a good basis.
Once you have mastered the two sequences, you can start playing them at the same time. To make it easier at first, you can choose a short passage of a few seconds from Jingle Bells and repeat it over and over. Once you have mastered this passage, play the next one over and over. Once you have mastered it, play both passages in a row.
This technique allows you to improve gradually without getting frustrated by not being able to play the song with both hands.
At La Touche Musicale, we call this technique the “learning loop”. Noticing the effectiveness of this technique on piano learning, we decided to integrate a feature into our online piano learning app that allows you to loop any part of the song and learn it very quickly.
Jingle Bells on the piano: the notes of both hands.
As we have done for each of the two hands, we have made a tutorial video for you so that you can play Jingle Bells with both hands at the same time on the piano. Pay particular attention to the moments when the notes of the right hand and those of the left hand are played at the same time, as well as to the moments when they should be played out of sync.
You can also pause to observe where the notes are on the virtual piano so you have time to play them.
Note: on La Touche Musicale app, you don’t need to pause the song. The application waits for you until you play the right note.
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The La Touche Musicale app waits for you to play the right notes with both hands on your piano before moving on to the next.
Congratulations! Now you can play one of the most popular Christmas songs on the piano! You can also learn other songs and genres that will bring diversity to your repertoire by checking out our articles about sad piano music, best jazz songs to play on piano, and best rap piano songs.
You can also find other piano tutorials of this type by consulting for example the one dedicated to how to learn Zelda’s Lullaby, Turkish March, Für Elise, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Rhapsody in Blue, Carol of the Bells, In the Hall of the Mountain King, Silent Night, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Deck the Hall, We Wish You a Merry Christmas or Amazing Grace on piano.
You can easily find Jingle Bells piano sheet music on the web. But, in addition to teaching you how to play the song through text explanations, diagrams and video tutorials, we thought it would also be convenient to provide you with a link to download the piano sheet music of the popular Christmas song for free.
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