Silent Night… slightly dissonant

For this Xmas season I committed to arranging some carols for solo ukulele. Silent Night (Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht) was an obvious candidate. Everything was going fine (you’ll find an nice & easy version at Ukecosas) until I discovered Alfred Schnittke’s version for violin and piano.

I started work on a new ukulele version, based on the dissonances proposed by Schnittke. The arrangement requires an unusual tuning: f C E Bb, that is, lowering a full step the fourth string while raising the first half step.

I consider the final result interesting, surprising… even beautiful.

In this video I’m playing an Ohana ‘Vita‘ soprano ukulele.

You can download this arrangement’s tab for free from my Patreon site.