Christmas Songs to Play — 17 Carols with Notes & Tabs for 25 Instruments

17 carols and winter songs, each written out for every instrument here that can play it. Pick a carol for its letter notes and the instruments that have the range, or pick your instrument for its own list with the opening of each tune.

Christmas songs by instrument

Each of these lists the carols that instrument can play, easiest first, with the first phrase of every one in the notation its players read.

the guzheng (1) and the handpan (2) play only a few of them, because of the scale they are tuned to; those are on their song pages.

The carols, easiest first

Ordered by range — the distance from a tune’s lowest note to its highest — because that, more than speed, is what decides whether a small instrument can play a carol and how far a beginner’s hands have to move. 0 of the 17 can be played on every one of the 27 instruments here.

Carol	From	Range	Notes	Instruments
Jingle Bells	United States, 1857	fifth	51	26 of 27
Jolly Old Saint Nicholas	United States, 1874 (music in print)	major sixth	48	25 of 27
Up on the Housetop	Ohio, 1864	major sixth	67	26 of 27
Away in a Manger	United States, 1887	octave	44	24 of 27
We Wish You a Merry Christmas	England, 19th century or earlier	octave	52	24 of 27
Good King Wenceslas	Finland and Sweden, 1582 (tune)	octave	53	24 of 27
Joy to the World	United States, 1836	octave	57	25 of 27
O Come, All Ye Faithful	England and France, c. 1743	octave	61	24 of 27
The First Noel	Cornwall, 1823 (in print)	octave	72	25 of 27
Deck the Halls	Wales, 16th century (tune)	octave and a semitone	68	25 of 27
Auld Lang Syne	Scotland, 18th century	octave and a whole step	56 · pentatonic	25 of 27
O Christmas Tree	Germany, 16th century (tune)	octave and a whole step	61	24 of 27
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen	England, 18th century or earlier	octave and a whole step	67	24 of 27
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing	Germany and England, 1840	octave and a whole step	76	24 of 27
O Holy Night	France, 1847	octave and a major third	95 · one or two off the scale	21 of 27
Silent Night	Oberndorf bei Salzburg, 1818	octave and a fourth	46	25 of 27
Carol of the Bells	Ukraine, 1916	octave and a fourth	92 · one or two off the scale	18 of 27

Which carols are missing, and why

Everything here is in the public domain: carols, and songs from the 19th century and earlier. Rudolph, Frosty, Let It Snow, Winter Wonderland and the other 20th-century standards are still in copyright, and a tab or fingering chart of one is a copy of its melody whatever it is written in — so they are not published here, on any instrument. Carol of the Bells is the melody of Mykola Leontovych’s “Shchedryk” of 1916, which is free; the English words written for it later are not, and no lyrics are printed on any of these pages in any case.

Each carol’s page names the published transcription its notes follow and the ones it was checked against.