Christmas Canon Rock Guitar Lesson – Trans-Siberian Orchestra
In this Christmas Canon Rock guitar lesson video, I will show you how to play this popular Christmas song by Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
The tuning is standard tuning, E A D G B E.
For large parts of this lesson, I have transcribed the piano and synth parts for guitar. This includes the opening "canon" chord progression and the verse sections.
The main guitar theme is heard for the first time just before the vocals come in. This part starts with the main theme and harmony lines are added to it when it repeats. I won't be demonstrating the harmony lines, instead, I am just focusing on the main theme.
I will also cover the solo note-for-note. The solo starts with a long pedal tone tapped sequence along the B string. The key here is to first practice the timing of the pedal tone taps before trying to string all of the notes together. After you have the timing down, then you can focus on memorizing the notes of each section and putting it all together.
After the tapping section, we quickly play a short soaring guitar melody, followed by a rapid sweep picking section that covers most of the fretboard using D major and and E major triads.
That sweep section is then followed up with a reprise of the main theme we played early in the song.
All-in-all, "Christmas Canon Rock" can be quite the challenge, especially the solo section.
I hope you have fun with it! Carl...
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Christmas Canon Rock - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
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Carl, WOW! It’s tough to play, but I love the chords you worked out. Spectacular job with that solo! I took lessons from Al Pitrelli in the ’80s. I’m actually sitting here learning this song on a custom ’85 Schecter super strat I bought from him in ’87, when he started getting sponsored by everybody. Al taught the minor scale in such a way that my hands went to a different fingering at 11:43. Instead of 14, 16, 18 on D, then 14, 16 on G, I did 14, 16 on D, then 13, 14, 16 on G. Either way. Great job! Thank you! Tom