Customer Reviews

A Charlie Brown Christmas(TM)(Easy Piano)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

I got this book as a present one year and was absolutely amazed. I've always loved the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and came to appreciate the music more and more as I grew up. Reading through the book, I discovered that the authors had done a painstaking job of transcribing Vince Garauldi's performance nearly note-for-note. When you first start playing "The Christmas Song" for example, you hear those flat-9 chords Vince loved to play and think to yourself, "Yeah, that's the real deal." Even the improvised solos are transcribed wonderfully.

This is NOT a book for the faint of heart. If you are unfamiliar with playing jazz piano, you may quickly get overwhelmed. However, what better way to learn some advanced chord voicings than to play it exactly the way the arranger did? The songs are beautiful and incredibly fun to play, but without at least an intermediate piano skill level, you may get frustrated.

If you are looking for a Piano Solo book with arrangments by Vince Guaraldi for Charlie Brown Christmas music, This Is It! All of the songs from the CD "A Charlie Brown Christmas" appear in this book. Do Not be fooled by the word "arrangment", if you happen to be looking for the original music. All of this music sounds almost exactly like the CD (and movie for that matter) even to the point of being written in the same key (F Major, G Major, Ab Major sometimes). Excellent Buy!
Level Rate:Late Intermediate-Early Advanced

I was excited to order this as I absolutely love "A Charlie Brown Christmas." I was eager to play some of my favorite Christmas songs from this book but quickly found that it was a lot more advanced playing than what I was used to. I have played piano for a few years and could not attempt some of the songs in there. Definately a good book if you are willing to try to learn to play them. Probably not the best if you aren't very advanced in your piano playing though.

I can't speak for the other songs in this book, but if your goal is to play 'Linus and Lucy' note-for-note, the sheet music in this book omits the first jazz solo. The full song with both solos is in this book: The Vince Guaraldi Collection: Piano (Artist Transcriptions).

Other than that, the transcription on the song is accurate and the formatting is easy to read.

Just received my copy of this song book last week, and like the other reviewers said this is simply great. No watered down arranged version for beginners. If you want the orginal music the way it was played then this is the one you want. Yes, it's a little demanding, but that's what practice is for. Playing it for the first time really put me in the holiday spirit. This is simply wonderful.

I bought this for my 8 year old who has been taking piano for almost two years and is at the end of the Level 2 book for his course. He wanted to play Linus and Lucy. We were disappointed when we received it and found out it was not "Easy". The notes themselves were rather simple but the synchronization of the hands was not simple. I spoke with his piano teacher and she said that this was just beyond his current capabilities and the easiest of books are called usually "Big Notes". So if you are looking for an easy piece to play, this is probably not it. However, it is a great representation of the song Linus and Lucy and our disappointment in the level of difficulty does not detract from the actual product. I give it 5 stars for being a great music book. But if you are looking for something for your beginning piano player this is probably not it.

The music in this book is a true rendition of what you hear on the soundtrack. Expect Jazz Piano, tough for a beginner, but well worth it.

The only thing that I was disappointed with was the fact that there was nothing in the vein of a written-out score or even chord charts included in the book for Vince Guaraldi's improvisations. Some of these improvisations, at least in my mind, really made these songs what they were; taking them out somehow makes the songs fundamentally different. Though a minor complaint, it still would have been nice to have some sort of representation of how to play the improvisations in a similar manner to how you hear them in the official soundtrack. Other than that, this is a fantastic book. It contains all of the original music strait from the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack - not reduced or simplified in any manner (at least that I could tell). It's perfect for the intermediate piano player that wants to find a fairly challenging, fun piece to play for the Christmas season that's outside the set of standard holiday tune arrangements. Any musician who grew up with Charlie Brown will have alot of fun learning the songs in this set.

Most of these are pretty hard (I'd say advanced intermediate), but having something like "O Tanenbaum", with walking bass and sophisticated chords, in your repertoire is a way to make points with people tired of snowflake songs. "Christmas Time is Here" is kind of a sleeper hit, and "Chestnuts Roasting" is a huge improvement on most of the arrangements available elsewhere. God bless Mr. Guaraldi wherever he is.