All I Want for Christmas is You

Hey everyone! For this year’s addition to the Christmas tab playlist, I decided to create a rock instrumental version of “All I want for Christmas is You”! My goal was to reimagine the vocals melodies on lead guitar, and just add a rock twist to the whole song overall.

LEADS
I did my best to capture the nuance of the vocal inflections. Although, I may have taken some creative liberties with the note rhythms and choices to better a guitar-focused arrangement. There is some added a chorus effect on all of the leads, inspired by Mariah’s double-tracked vocals.

INTRO
At the beginning, you’ll hear some harmonics – I went 12 frets higher and used my right hand to gently lay on the strings while plucking with my thumb. If anyone knows the exact name for this technique, please share! I thought it was fitting, considering the original uses chimes.

RHYTHM
The drums and bass stay pretty true to the original track, but I added some power chord chugging for a little extra energy.

ENDING
The studio version fades out, so I drew inspiration from some of the live performances I found to give it a proper finish.