Play "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" Your Way! (PIYW #4, December 2025)

rsl12 · 2025-10-18T11:00:26+00:00

Special Note: For this PIYW, submissions will be posted in Pianotell's Winter Holiday Recital. You can participate in the Holiday Recital either through PIYW...

rsl12

Sophia He seems to learn like

He seems to learn like it's nothing. Exactly.

twocats

You all have a little less than a month to get your submissions in!

rsl12

twocats Actually, for the holiday recital, there's no publication date. It will open at the beginning of December and anyone can post in it like a normal thread until the holidays are over I suppose. But I appreciate you remembering to put in a reminder!!!

twocats

rsl12 oh oops! I got my calendar reminder to post here so I did 🙂

rsl12

All done! Not my best recording, but I'm happy to check off one item from the Christmas "To Do List".

ShiroKuro

I played through a version I have, a lower intermediate version in a Hal Leonard collection. It’s fine, do-able, and also dead boring.

rsl12
Easy
Easy/Intermediate
Advanced

Is anyone playing one of the links that rsl12 originally shared?

I just listened and the intermediate version is actually really cool! Although I think it should be played slower than the tempo setting in musescore, it would actually bring out all the fun bits more.

I don’t know if I have time to get that one in my fingers, but maybe I’ll try it.

Rsl12, did you record a different version? (Apologies if I missed it if you mentioned it in one of the posts above)

rsl12

ShiroKuro Is anyone playing one of the links that rsl12 originally shared?

I played my own improvised version. No one has said they are doing any of the versions linked in the top post.

I understand why you would hesitate to play sheet music that someone else is also playing, but just to be clear, everyone is welcome to do so! After all, that's what everyone is doing with the Haydn PIYW.

Simonb

Hi ShiroKuro

No I'm not. Like you I looked at that intermediate version, and thought that looks nice, but I don't have time to learn it.

I found a very very simple version that I might improvise something from, but it's not a tune that suits me in that regard as it's in 3/4. I'll probably change it to 4/4, or just not bother.... 😢

Cheers

ShiroKuro

rsl12 I understand why you would hesitate to play sheet music that someone else is also playing

(Apologies, I lost track of this thread prepping for Thanksgiving)

I’m not necessarily hesitant to play something that’s the same score/version as someone else. I was asking more because I want to hear someone else play this arrangement (the intermediate one you linked). I think it’s such a cool arrangement but the MuseScore recording is imo too fast.

Anyway, I decided not to work on that arrangement (at least not this year). It’s got too much going on inside it and if I work on that, I won’t really have time to work on any other Christmas music. I guess I’d rather have several easy piece rather than one impressive one. We’ll see how that goes in practice !

rsl12

Simonb I'll probably change it to 4/4, or just not bother

My fingers naturally went to 4/4 all the time while I was practicing! It required effort to keep it in 3/4! But it was good practice.

(it also sounded fine as a 4/4 piece.)

ShiroKuro

So does anyone know if there's a way to buy a score from MuseScore without signing up for their subscription thing?

rsl12

If you press the "download" button and choose a format option, doesn't it give you the opportunity to buy the sheet music without a subscription? (For me it says "Buy this score for ~~$2.99~~ $0.99 (First Purchase Discount)")

ShiroKuro

rsl12 I will look at it again but that’s what I did and it bundled the $40 subscription fee and I couldn’t figure out how to delete that part.

WieWaldi

ShiroKuro I feel your pain.
musescore.com is very confusing to me. It always lures me into a subscription. I mean, it is fine if I have a flatrate for downloading scores (with a subscription, I do have a flatrate, do I?), but honestly: How many scores per month can I learn? One - a half one - maybe two? In this case, I don't need a flatrate. No - I am willing to pay per score. With my learning tempo it is much cheaper, and I am not bound to a single online resource.

In this case, it just asks me to log in and offers to pay 0.99 with paypal for a download - but only in conjunction with a premium account. Without premium 2.49.
I already recorded WWYAMC, so I don't go beyond this step. But I assume 0.99 is somehow bound to my paypal account with monthly fee. And I assume 2.49 is a one time transaction; definitely the way I'd go.

Generally, I love musescore sheet music, because I can edit it with musescore editor. Easy transcribing, or changing font sizes. I can make out of a 5 pager a 4 pager. For instance, I can delete an advanced section, I am not able to learn. Sometimes it is wise to only make the font of the title extremely small, enough space for one additional staff line. In the best case, this means one page less.

ShiroKuro

WieWaldi I love musescore sheet music, because I can edit it with musescore editor

This isn’t something I’ve tried yet. Actually, I would love to be able to edit some of the scores I have (like my arrangement of the Canon, which looks horrible between my written-in parts and the physical copying and pasting I did to smoosh together two different scores). I also have a similar (ok, it’s even worse) hand-done mash-up arrangement of the Carol of the Bells….

But I’ve never learned how to do musical scoring and I wouldn’t want to do full-scale manual entry of an entire musical score…

Can Musescore take input from a generic pdf score or does it have to be a musicxml file?

WieWaldi

ShiroKuro Can Musescore take input from a generic pdf score or does it have to be a musicxml file?

Very good question.
AFAIK, there is a possibility to upload a pdf to the musescore-server, and the server recognizes the notes and creates a mscz (musescore) file for downloading and further editing. I never tried this option, but I read it work rather bad. My info is a few years old now; maybe nowadays the software is improved with (e.g. AI) and it works better, but I don't know.

You see, this is the reason I prefer to have my sheet music as mscz file in the first place. I can print or create a pdf easily; but the other way round... 🤔

WieWaldi

ShiroKuro But I’ve never learned how to do musical scoring and I wouldn’t want to do full-scale manual entry of an entire musical score…

This is something, I learned very quickly in my musical career. Probably even before I knew what a blues shuffle is. It is very handy. If I come up with my own phrase*, I score it with musescore and the software can play it for me. If it sounds as I want it to sound, I know it is scored correctly.

*my own phrase = I mess up my blues lesson, but it still sounds somehow good. 😂

rsl12

ShiroKuro It is an interesting arrangement. I was curious how you would manage to get it in shape in just a month!

ShiroKuro

rsl12 I was curious how you would manage to get it in shape in just a month!

Yeah... I wouldn't have managed well! 😃

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