Jingle Bells – Making Music

Introduction

For the winter term we have created a lesson to learn Jingle Bells in GarageBand.

The song was written by James Lord Pierpont, under the title “One Horse Open Sleigh” in the autumn of 1857. We are not entirely sure of its first use, perhaps it was sung by a Sunday school choir. It did not have an initial connection to Christmas, but has become one of our most common pieces of music played at Christmas and the holiday season. It was first recorded in 1889 on an Edison cylinder and it is believed to be the first Christmas record.

It played in space in 1965 by the Gemini 6 astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Shirra. On December 16, 1965 they sent this report to Mission Control from their spacecraft.

‘Gemini VII, this is Gemini VI. We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, up in a polar orbit. He’s in a very low trajectory traveling from north to south and has a very high climbing ratio. It looks like it might even be a … Very low. Looks like he might be going to reenter soon. Stand by one … You might just let me try to pick up that thing.’

Have a listen to see if you can understand who they think they can see out of the window.

Words

Before we all had cars it was common in parts of America to add bells to horses’ harnesses to let other travels know you are coming, as the snow could dampen the noise of the horses hooves . The rhythm of the tune mimics a trotting horse’s bells. Below are the modern version of the words we use today.

Jingle Bells

Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh
O’er the fields we go
Laughing all the way

Bells on bob tail ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight!

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
Oh! what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way;
Oh! what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

There are a series of 10 short videos that lead you though the project. We have added two of them here but the rest are in the our YMI YouTube Channel iPad playlist

Jingle Bells – An example of how it should sound when finished

Learning Resources

To download files right click on the links and then select either:‘

- Save Target As’ (PC)
- ‘Download Linked File’

GarageBand Jingle Bells Project Steps.pdf

Jingle Bells Melody Sheet.pdf

Exporting Your Project Sound File

Save Your Project!

Video lessons

You can access the 10 video in three ways. If you have access to the schools GLOW network then all the lesson video’s are in the Making Music Team pages, or in the Making Music Sharepoint folder.