It is almost Christmas 2020 in Sydney in Australia. And this time of year brings two things, storms and Christmas music. I'm going to show you where to get some great free Christmas music and Hanukkah music. I'll show you my three favourite Christmas carols. Let's go inside so that I don't get blown away.

Free Christmas flute sheet music

So my name is Jane Cavanagh. I am a flute teacher and I love this time of year because I get to do Christmas music with my flute students. There's a great website called flutetunes.com and they have lots of Christmas music. It's all free. Go down to the left-hand side and click on browse tunes then go to search by category down at the filing cabinet and then click on Christmas music. Christmas carols. There are 92 free Christmas carols for you this Christmas in the strange year of 2020.

Jane's favourite Christmas carols on the flute

Today I'm going to show you my three favourite carols. One is a flute solo, one is a duet and one is a trio. These are all fantastic. Okay, my favourite flute solo is the 12 days of Christmas and I'll tell you why in just a second. A lot of people think this is really repetitive. Click on PDF sheet music, and it will pop up. This is fantastic for doing with students. I'll tell you what I do with my students. They're mostly kids, but you, if you're an adult, you can totally apply this to yourself as well. Well, there are 12 days in this 12 days of Christmas, obviously. The first day on the first line. Then the second day. Each line keeps getting bigger. Each day keeps getting bigger all the way down to the 12th day, which is almost three lines long. Back up to the top. This is fantastic because you can practice your precision with playing. If you're in your first year or two of playing, you can practice playing all these notes, rhythms and slurs absolutely correctly. And give yourself a star or a tick or a smiley face when you can do it with zero mistakes.

And go through all the 12 days and give yourself a star, a tick, a smiley face sticker until you can get to 12. If you're a little more advanced, you can do the whole thing, but do it up the octave.

If you're in your first couple of years of playing, it gets pretty complicated. If you've been playing for longer, do the 8va one, up the octave version.

Flute duet Christmas carol

The next duet, if you go back into our list, look up The First Noel, this is a fantastic duet. And I'll tell you why it's so fantastic. Click on PDF sheet music. The second part of this, the harmony part, the second flute part is so beautiful. It's not your usual harmony to a Christmas Carol. It's creative. It's like a countermelody it's sort of like, it's sort of got its own melody. So I'm going to play you the second part. So starting at the top and the second flute part, and you're going to hear that sounds absolutely nothing like The First Noel. I should just play you the first part first of the melody. So you know which piece is, and if you need a memory jog. Now listen to the harmony part. I'm going to play you the first line and a half or so. And just listen to how not like The First Noel, it seems.

Playing a flute duet with yourself

You'll agree you don't recognize it at all. And that is what makes this duet so interesting and so beautiful. So if you've got another flute player that you can play with, try playing this as a duet. Now, if you don't, don't forget that you can get your phone, your voice memo recorder on your phone or computer, record one of these parts, then press play on it and play along with it. And they can be your flute duet partner.

Favourite flute trio Christmas carol

All right, let's go back and I'll show you the flute trio that I love. So back to the list of Christmas carols, and this one is called Carol of the Bells.  I'm sure you're going to recognize this. So click on PDF sheet music and let me play you just the first four bars and you will recognize this. I'm sure you will.

I never knew this was Ukrainian, this song, which is pretty cool because it was quite famous. So here we have on the first page, the flute one part. Like I said, this is a flute trio. So scroll down and you'll see that there is flute two. This is the flute two-part then you have the flute three-part. And then on the next page, you actually have all three parts on the same page. This is the page that I use with my students. I normally play one of these parts, get my student to play another, and then have the following student jumping for the end of the lesson and play the third part. Often we have to spend weeks learning it because some of them are quite a beginner, but it's the most beautiful, beautiful melody. It's two pages long, and you're going to absolutely love it.

Playing a flute trio with yourself

If you're a bit techie minded, you can play this flute trio with yourself. All you need to do is record one part with your phone, voice recorder or voice memo recorder, then press play on that and record it and yourself playing the second part on your computer and then press play on that recording. And then joining by playing the third part. That way you get to play a flute trio with yourself.

Three flute Christmas carols for 2020

So there you go. They are my favourite three Christmas carols for this year 2020. Now the storm has not hit yet. So I'm going to take you back outside and see what's going on. I'll try not to get blown away. So yes, in that time of recording your three Christmas pieces, the storm has progressed and it's just started hailing. Have a great lead up to Christmas from me in stormy Sydney, not stormy today anyway, and I'll see you next week.