Customer Reviews

Merry Christmas Songbook

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A must-have for group song leaders (or wanna be s)!
I like this book very much, even though it costs more than some similar Christmas songbooks because it contains:
A spiral binding allows it to lay flat on music stand, piano, etc.
A lyrics book allows more people to sing along than just those that can look over the shoulders of the accompanist.
Brief stories about the songs and carols (not 100% accurate, but some stories are more legend, anyway), some that I had not seen before.
Guitar chords.
A great many selections.
Some selections I had not been aware of before.
Faster, easier, and more reliable (and legal) that searching for lyrics and music on the internet.

Drawbacks:

Some selections are in a key unfamiliar to my accompanist, and me but then I don't really have that great of a singing range.
Some very popular selections are missing: "White Christmas", "(There's no Place Like) Home for the Holidays", but those are so familiar and easy to sing I probably shouldn't count them.
Probably because of space limitations, some selections do not have all of the verses that I have discovered in other sources.

P.S. Another good songbook that I found is "Most Popular Christmas Songs & Carols" (Warner Bros.) has some newer selections and might be helpful.

As a pianist, I have always looked for accessible christmas music to play and sing along to. I love this collection because just about every carol is in there, they're easy to play at a moment's notice, and a lryics book is included. This book is great for christmas gatherings when everyone wants to request their favorite carol. The music is easy enough, but not overly simple. I take this book with me everywhere at Christmas time!!

This book contains an excellent assortment of both familiar and not-so-well-known Christmas songs. The arrangements are advanced enough to avoid sounding incomplete, yet easy enough that an intermidiate to advanced player can get through them without too much trouble. Pleasing chords. It is nice to have the words included also. I received this book as a Christmas present, but I will probably be using it well into the new year!

This book is OKAY, but it contains a lot of songs that I'm not familiar with (and my singing Christmas guests wouldn't be either!). That being said, I love the Reader's Digest Songbook Collection and felt compelled to "complete" the collection. Also....this has a CD (at least mine did) and that will be handy at Christmas, huh?

This songbook is for the intermediate pianist.

This "Merry Christmas Songbook - Revised" is a joy to have for my Christmas music collection. I especially like the spiral book spine as it helps the music to lay flat against the piano book holder. It has many wonderful Christmas songs both old and new. It is a rather easy to play method and is a book that you can share with your family and friends for the years to come. It is well worth the price.

This is a newer version of a songbook that was first published in 1981, I believe. The saddest part is that six of the songs previously in the book are no longer there. Those songs are: "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," "Mary's Little Boy Child," "My Favorite Things," "Silver Bells," "Sleep Well Little Children," and "Toyland." If you specifically want any of those songs, I suggest you look for a previous edition of this book.

I have the old version of this book from the 80's. This is exactly the same with the exception of maybe one page and this one has a new cover and a CD. The song selection is great. I use this for playing the piano. My skill level is not very advanced so this is challenging enough for me without being too difficult. I bought this copy for a friend who liked my old one and wanted one for herself. Excellent buy.

Easy playing but the songs can get up there for family voices. Eg E and F is not uncommon

Reader's Digest has made a GREAT contribution to musicians with this edition. The spiral binding helps the book stay open flat, and songs are set on facing pages to minimize page turning. Great for the pro or the amateur musician.

There is a very wide selection of songs in this book from the Nutcracker suite, to traditional holiday songs, to religious pieces. Songs are pretty simple and it even has brief summaries of the history of each song as well as the composer. It also includes a nice book with the lyrics to every song, and 2 CDs with christmas songs, although they are the original hit versions, not piano versions, which is a little weird. The CDs are okay, just kind of a bonus, and contain maybe around 30 songs, which many aren't even in the book, but still good to listen to around the holiday, however, just because the CDs aren't piano solos or contain all the songs in this book, doesn't mean the book is bad. It is a spiral and easy to keep open, as well as very convenient. The only problem I found was that the songs are not in alphabetical order, so it gets kind of annoying to have to flip back to the index to find each song since they are in a random order.