I’d like to write more tunes and just get them straight out there so I’ve decided this year I will write a piece each month. Each piece will be available for free on my website and the lovely My Music Resource until the end of the month, when it will go into my catalogue for a small fee and a new one will be uploaded.
I will aim to put something up around the 20th of each month. The tunes will be of varied levels and styles, whatever inspires me at the time. The first of these pieces I’d say is mid to late intermediate; a cheerful pentatonic melody with swung quavers. It’s sunny and it’s swingy. It’s Sunny Swing. Looks like the next one might possibly be a duet.
If you do download and play these tunes, feel free to get in touch. I’d love to hear any feedback you might have. If there’s a genre/style/level you’d like to see, I’m always open to requests!
I hope things are well for you and you enjoy some of these tunes.
This is a song my young ukulele classes know very well! I wrote it to get children around the age of five to press one string and then off again while they strum as a very first step. The song is accompanied by a toy or cut-out of a squirrel. They have a star under a string on their ukulele fret board and they have to press their finger on it whenever they see the squirrel. To play it the simplest way, one string on their ukulele needs to be tuned down a tone. Scroll down for more information if you’re interested in teaching this version for very small absolute beginners.
I then adapted it to suit children who already can play a C chord but then need to learn to swap between chords.
How to teach the Squirrel Song with two one-finger chords (as in the video)
Get them strumming, alternately hold the squirrel up and hide it behind your back. When they see the squirrel they play the star chord, when the don’t, they play a chord of C. When they are able to do this, sing the song while they strum and hide/bring out the squirrel at the appropriate points in the song.
Put them in charge When they have been playing the song over a good few weeks and you feel they know it well, you can get them to take turns standing in front, hiding and showing the squirrel while you and the rest of the group follow them. They love doing this! Once they can show the squirrel in the right places then you really know that they have internalised when to change chord in a song.
Lyrics
Take a chord of C, tall like a tree Makes it nice and easy if you use your finger 3 Next part of the song, Squirrel comes along Find that star and put your finger 1 on
What can you see in the old oak tree? A big, fat squirrel looking straight at me I can’ t see what branch she’s on There she is! Now she’s gone.
The squirrel in the song started out as a he. Then an artist friend of mine, the wonderful Amelia Clark designed a new squirrel to replace the considerably battered cardboard cut-out I was using with my over- enthusiastic class. The students felt that the new squirrel was most definitely a she.
How to teach the Squirrel song with one one-finger chord and an open chord
(For very small beginners)
Tune their ukuleles to G C E G instead of the normal G C E A. Now when they strum they are playing a ready-made chord of C. All they need to do is keep strumming, put their finger on the star chord when they see the squirrel and take it off when they don’t.
Play the song in the same way as before, but use these words:
Play an open chord, play it nice and loud Put your finger on and listen to the sound Play an open chord, play it nice and soft Put your finger on and take it off
What can you see in the old oak tree? A big, fat squirrel looking straight at me I can’ t see what branch she’s on There she is! Now she’s gone.
Thanks so much to Kimi Maeda for the amazing squirrel puppets, backdrop, filming and puppetry in the above video.
There is still time to enter for the Piano For all Competition. This is a very special competition as young pianists get to play for perhaps the first time formally in front of an encouraging and appreciative audience, and get to meet the composers of all the music featured.
Also O holy night, which goes very high and very low, so we settled on the key of F, which suits us. Please commet if you need a different key. Here it is with the tuneline, words and chords.
This carol is such a joy to sing, kids often request to learn it. One of my students was convinced the words were “Ding Dong Berry on a Pie” which caused quite a long conversation trying to uncover which carol it actually was. “You know, the one about the pie”.
I have arranged it in G and added a bass line for a piano left hand which is quite easy. There chords are there for any more fleshing out of the harmony required. There’s a nice pattern to the bass notes in the chorus which is really satisfying!
Looking forward to a rousing chorus of this at my Christmas Big Fat Music Party.
The new term is here! How did that happen? I’d love to share with you what we got up to at our end of term Big Fat Music Party back when the summer holidays were a dream waiting around the corner.
As usual we had a nice varied programme with plenty of audience participation. My favourite moment was when one of my young students sang a pirate song she had written for voice and piano. Every time she sang, ‘Aaaarrrr’! We had to call back, ‘Shiver me timbers!’ And when she sang ‘Shiver me timbers’, we all had to respond ‘Aaaarrrr!’
We performed a mass 12 bar blues jam. I kept a bass accompaniment going on the piano; there was a long line of people waiting to improvise on the treble. They improvised In pairs on a scale of their choice – major pentatonic, flat 3 pentatonic or blues. At any given time there were two students playing question and answer in four bar phrases. When one student had played enough questions, they went to sit down and the answering student shifted up to take the questions, and a new student from the line became the new answerer. Clear as mud? Well it was fun even if hard to describe. We had some really interesting combinations of students who had never played together before, listening well and jamming with each other.
I like to have at least one big fat number where I get everyone playing/singing together. This time it was Twist and shout.
What a tune! I’ve never really realised its potential as an out and out joyful teaching song before.
It has same simple chord sequence throughout the song which is what we like! (See Cyclical Chord Progessions). Apart from the times you stick on the one chord for the long ascending Ahs. Children love this bit. No, strike that, Everyone loves this bit! You can bring them all off, make a dramatic pause (make them wait, make them listen) and then bring the whole raucous band back in again. It’s instinctively easy to feel where the point is to rejoin, and they all come crashing back in with gusto. Rule one of a big fat jam: don’t be too precious.
Instrumentation on the night
Three people on piano, two playing um cha, one playing this bass part:
(kept simple for the confidence of the sudent – he had quite an important job with this part).
4 soprano ukuleles, 1 baritone ukulele
1 guitar playing strum, hit, strum hit, down up down up down up down up (hit the strings with your hand, not the person standing next to you)
1 trumpet playing this:
This is the sounding pitch; as the trumpet is a transposing instrument I wrote it out for him like this:
1 big drum
Lots of shakers and various percussion instruments
Lots of singers.
And my favourite of all – my daughter and her friend playing this drone on 2 violins:
I started the bass piano player off first, then brought in the two people playing um cha on the piano, then guitar, ukuleles, trumpet, violins, drum, percussion. By the time I had brought all of these groups in one by one, they had had lots of time jamming around their part to feel confident and get into a nice groove with each other. Then I brought us all in for the song.
We had a lyric sheet written up huge and hung on the wall, with a handy student-assistant (who had helped make the poster) pointing out to everyone where we were.
What I realised was that if I direct it all on the night I don’t have to worry about giving people things to remember, like when to change to this point, when to drop out etc. The students have their simple sequences to play, and otherwise await instruction. They can just enjoy feeling the music together, and they have to keep an eye and ear out for me whilst holding down their part. Great musicianship training, relaxing, and much more likely to succeed when getting 20 people playing a tune together without prior rehearsal!
For the end, we copied what the Beatles did when playing this song live. After the ascending ‘ah’s, they climb up from E to A, semitone by semitone. For those not playing the semitones, they waited to play a big fat A at the end. I sang, “Now it’s time to play…” to the semitone climb up so that we were all in no doubt when to strike the AAAAAA!
What a lovely lively band! I didn’t manage to record it, but a few weeks later, my family along with a couple of other families ended up jamming it around the tents at Priddy folk festival. We enjoyed it so much we performed it on stage at the open mic. This is ‘Big Jam’: as my husband pointed out, our first gig as a family. That’s my 4 year old son there playing the shaker.
(we didn’t really get the final climb up going in this version. Never mind, if in doubt, give the audience a big grin!)
I’m alerting you to a gig in the Cotswolds, organised by a friend of mine which will be an exceptional evening of music making. I can’t wait, and I hope a lot of you will be able to come and join me.
If you’ve not heard of them before, Anna and Elizabeth are a duo from the States who specialise in American roots music. They find hidden gems in the folk music archives and bring them to life with fiddle, guitar, banjo and wonderful vocals. They tell stories with music and artwork, including captivating moving scrolls called “crankies“.
Scroll down for videos of Anna and Elizabeth in action.
“Elizabeth Laprelle is one of the most sought-after ballad singers of her generation and Anna Gevalt-Roberts a mesmerizing, talented multi-instrumentalist and singer, both sharing a desire to inspire people with the beautiful soul of Appalachian roots music.
Creating a huge buzz of excitement on their UK tour earlier this year, they plan to return in May 2017 with their captivating mix of ballads, foot-stomping dance tunes, stories and visual art. Reviving the lost art of ‘crankies’: cloth and cut-paper scrolls depicting scenes from ballads, their show (and workshops) are also ideal for educational settings as well as concert and festival venues.”Alan Bearman Music
“They came to NPR and brought many of us to tears with some of the most yearning harmonies I’ve heard at the Tiny Desk. These songs are given few embellishments — sometimes a fiddle is added to a single voice, sometimes a banjo or guitar chimes in — but always the power is in the sparseness. If you’ve never thought your tastes would lean to mountain music, take a deep breath and soak it all in.” Bob Boilen, NPR Music
We had another lovely Big Fat Christmas Music Party on Monday. We finished with everyone singing ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, in which each verse was sung as a solo by a different student. Five in all. I’m so glad have so many enthusiastic singers in my ranks!
For the solos though, I didn’t play the chords, I just used bare 5ths (C and G) as a long drone underneath. It complemented their young voices well, and was a contrast from the full-chorded and raucous chorus, where everyone piled in and sang. The verse and chorus have exactly the same chords and tune so a bit of variation is good, and it sounded lovely. I would definitely recommend playing it this way.
This tune was noted down by Cecil Sharpe in 1909, from a folk singer in the Cotswolds. Another tune for the same carol was recorded from a folk singer in Herefordshire in the 1950s. Steeleye Span recorded it and made it well known in the 70s. It’s a beautifully lyrical alternative. Here are the dots-
It’s that time of year again, and Christmas carols are so great to use with music students. They are a whole group of tunes that are already familiar and, most of the time, people of all ages love playing them.
They are also fantastic for teaching people to harmonise. Consequently I have a large amount that I have arranged for this purpose. They are clear to read, mostly with the tune line notated and the chords written above. They are in many different keys, which comes from teaching different instruments. What’s easiest for beginner piano or ukulele is not the easiest for guitar or violin.
Here are links to PDFs of them all, hope they prove useful!
Please feel free to request any others, or different keys.
Back to showcasing the duets in my books. Here is Andantino, the third duet in Delightfully Easy Piano Duets: Book 1. It’s a good one for practice at reading the bass clef. It starts off with both players just playing with their left hands, then you get a swell of volume and texture as the right hands are added.
The beginner’s melody is slow over the Diabelli bass figure of the intermediate part. If a beginner needs encouragement with feeling the rhythm here, I often play their part with them to begin with, in my free right hand.
The question and answer phrases exchanged by beginner and Intermediate near the end of the piece are fun and encourage each part to listen to each other.
I’ve made an easy arrangement of Silent Night for a student. It’s in G which is less stratospheric to sing along to.
Free download, easy piano with chords.
It’s that time of year again, and Christmas carols are so great to use with music students. They are a whole group of tunes that are already familiar and, most of the time, people of all ages love playing them.
Conrad's Chords 