Silent Night: the ultimate Christmas song

Silent Night is one of the oldest Christmas hits that still blasts out of the speakers in many homes during the festive season. Fun fact: the song was written by a young Austrian priest, Joseph Mohr, who first performed it on guitar in December 1818 at St Nicholas Church in Oberndorf. With just three chords, Silent Night is a doddle to learn on guitar. Guest blogger Teo from Chordify explains how!

Stille Nacht: het ultieme kerstnummer - Leer de gitaarakkoorden!

Easy and accessible

You’re probably a little surprised that Silent Night was originally composed for guitar. There’s a good reason for that. In 1818, the organ at St Nicholas Church was damaged by flooding, and since the instrument accompanied most of the songs in the church, an alternative was needed. With the help of composer Franz Xaver Gruber, Mohr managed to keep Silent Night easy and accessible.

The secret of Silent Night

The secret of Silent Night is that the song consists solely of verses, all built from the same three chords. In other words: once you’ve got one verse down, you can play the whole song. It doesn’t get any easier. Well—actually it does, because the chords are pretty basic, meaning any beginner can learn Silent Night in no time. To make it even easier, we’ve split the verse into three parts, based on the harmonies and lyrics. We call the first part the “intro”, and it’s built from a G chord and a D7 chord. The “middle” part of the verse uses a C chord and a G chord. The “final” part of Silent Night uses the same two chords as the intro, but in reverse. So: a D7 chord first, and a G chord second. That’s how simple it is. Check out the video tutorial below. Want to learn more about guitar chords? Head over to this blog.

Improvising over Silent Night

For the beginner guitarist, this is great fun—but as a more advanced player, you’ll want a bit of a challenge now and then. It might not be the obvious choice, but soloing over Silent Night is just as simple as the chords themselves. The song uses only three chords, all of which belong to the G major scale. If you feel like going full Hendrix on this Christmas classic, it’s simply a case of mixing up the notes G, A, B, C, D, E, F# until you find a melody that feels good. Want to learn more about scales? Head over to this article.

Curious how to play Silent Night on piano or ukulele? Check out Chordify’s Songs Explained Xmas Special. Need more festive inspiration? Take a look at Chordify’s Advent channel and Christmas channel. Enjoy and happy jamming!

Guest blogger Teo Lazarov (Chordify)

Teo Lazarov is a journalist, entrepreneur and musician. He writes, among other things, for the Chordify blog and is the founder of the magazine DATmag. When he’s not writing or conducting interviews, he plays bass guitar in the band Baa$: the result of a mad experiment in which the DNA of Pantera and Ice-T was crossed with that of Bruce Lee and The Predator.