Now that I have recorded all of my Delightfully Easy Duets with the unstoppable Rei Kozaki, I have been meaning to feature a different duet each week.
So here is Allegro, duet 1 from book 1. It has an upbeat, sunny feel, with a bit of an echo game going on between the two parts.
These duets were written specifically for maximum ease, and this one is particularly easy for the intermediate secondo part.
The beginner’s part is always in unison throughout the two books, so that the beginner can experience coordination between the two hands without having to think of two different ideas at once. In Allegro, the intermediate part gets to play with both hands in unison too, so they can relax and enjoy the interplay between the two parts.
There is a faster rhythmic figure which gets passed between the players, which always has a crescendo and diminuendo. I would advise players to see if they can outdo each other on these swells of dynamic. And don’t pause at the end of the lines. Think ahead and keep going!
I thought I’d kick off 2016 with two tunes: a really old tune and a brand new one that fit together perfectly. I’m lucky enough to attend a folk music workshop with Laurel Swift one evening a week. We learn a new tune every time. One of the tunes I love for its simplicity is the Welsh tune, Pwt Ar y Bys, or Buttered Peas. Someone at the workshop mentioned they’d like the group to play two tunes simultaneously which fit together. I thought I would have a go at writing a tune that would fit with one we already play, and chose Pwt Ar y Bys. So here is my tune, Buttered Scones.
These two tunes are great to play together in a group instrumental lesson, or just between friends for fun. They are easy and enjoyable in their own right, and create a great ensemble piece when put together. Laurel added a third part; a drone (just one note, D in quavers all the way) which sounds great. Here are the unstoppable West London Folk Band (our weekly workshop group) playing this, then launching into a new time signature for a third tune, Barney Bralligan’s. Spot our illustrious leader break into a clog dance for the grand finale of the concert!
Magic can happen when you look beyond the dots and treat music like ingredients. Mix things up, try things out, see what delights you can cook up!
If you’re interested in folk tunes, the blog for Laurel’s workshops is a great one to follow. All the tunes, old and new which we learn each week are put up in the form of notation and a video so you can hear it.
Also well worth a visit is Jenny Glover’s Fiddletails where Jenny delves into her considerable knowledge of folk tunes, especially American old time, and comes up with some real gems.
A few Sundays ago I attended the event, Casio workshop for Piano Teachers in Waterloo. It was great to share some of my teaching ideas and techniques with the group and demonstrate how I use these with my book, ‘Fun, Games and Party Pieces‘.
I was demonstrating how to teach chords right from the beginning, and using ‘um cha’ and ‘um cha cha’ to accompany all the pieces they are learning. This is fun and rewarding for the student, as they are making a big sound and they are on a level musically with the teacher. They are also internalising the harmonic structure and pulse of the pieces they are playing. This is happening naturally through the practical experience of playing rather than an intellectual exercise. The handout I made for the workshop detailing the steps I use to teach chords to beginners can be downloaded here.
I had fun showing the teachers how to do this with the chord diagrams for the tunes in Fun, Games and Party Pieces. Here’s a volunteer playing Um Cha using the chord diagram to ‘Mix it Up’, and me with two volunteers playing a trio version of ‘Three Tunes in Three’.
I played through some of my duets with the piano teachers which is always good fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed being in the audience for the rest of the day. Highlights for me were as follows:-
Composer Heather Hammond demonstrating the circle of 5ths in a minor key and then breaking out into a rousing rendition of ‘I will Survive’.
Hearing the sound of a grand piano being played in Notre Dame cathedral from a small digital piano.
Physiotherapist Drusilla Redman asking the audience to describe the feeling of performance nerves, and then getting us to recall how it feels when you fall in love. Light-headedness, sweaty palms, racing heart… ‘Did you like the feeling?’ She asked. The response was a definite ‘Yes’. So what happens to you when you fall in love is the same stuff that’s going on when you have performance anxiety. The difference is how we view it. What a useful and liberating comparison!
Sitting among Heather’s and my books with the lovely Naomi from Solemate.
A big thanks to Lorraine Liyanage from SE22 Piano School for organising this great day.
Since Launching Fun, Games and Party pieces I have been really pleased with how versatile it has proved to be in my own teaching. I added chord diagrams to each tune for family members to play along on different instruments, or teachers who like to work with chords like me.
The book functions well enough as a collection of fun pieces for beginners, but also has real scope for opening up the world of harmony for teacher and pupil alike, starting a journey that will ensure a deeper understanding of all the music the student will encounter in their future.
There are so many things you can do with these chord diagrams, giving students the ability to use chords, harmonise and understand harmony right from the beginning.
Excitingly, I’m going to get a chance to demonstrate these techniques in the Casio workshop for Piano Teachers this coming September.
I am looking forward for this chance to show other teachers how I use my own music in my own lessons, but also I’m really looking forward to being a part of this all-day workshop.
I’ll get the chance to learn about using digital technology in lessons to great effect, try out the latest digital pianos, hear straight from the composer of ‘All That Jazz’ about teaching Jazz and other modern styles, get help with how to promote the best posture for my students, find out how to run a ‘practice-a-thon’ and try out the new elegant and versatile footstool for young pianists.
Come and join me! The organiser has very kindly allowed me to offer a discount to my friends. Click the link below to enjoy a discounted rate of £24.99 for the whole day.
I recently realised that ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ would make a wonderful two-chord song for beginners and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.
It was a song we sang at school right at the start. Reception age, when memories begin. I have memories of other songs from that time, I’m a little teapot, I quite liked the gentleness of Kumbaya. In particular I have a strong memory of finding the tune of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’ moronic and feeling very disgruntled at being made to sing this and clap my hands in affirmation whether I actually felt happy or not. (I never did like ‘forced jollity’ and I suppose this song is the embodiment of that!)
I really was happy when we sang ‘Whole World’, and that feeling as a small child is what I associate the song with. I don’t remember it that clearly, but I remember loving it. There’s something about the rhythm that sets it apart from other songs, something that forces you to swing it and move like you’re in a gospel choir.
Put all that with the fact that the structure is easy to grasp instinctively and only uses two chords. A perfect recipe for happy music-making.
At my last Big Fat Music Party, we played it as a group in C to suit the piano and ukuleles, and the guitars played it in A with a capo on the 3rd fret. Here are the charts –
The pianist played ‘um cha’ on C and G – (She loves playing this to accompany herself singing).
Because of the gospel feel, I took this opportunity to get people to practice clapping on beats 2 and 4, to the right and then the left. A great exercise which lightens and brings music to life, rather than the dull, lumpy clapping on 1 and 3 which seems to come naturally to us white Europeans, I’m afraid!
There are various different verses, I have put a selection of popular ones in the charts. You can always make up your own. Nina Simone sang, ‘He’s got the gamblin’ man in his hands’ in her achingly beautiful slow chordal version with the sublime descending basslines. Not a two chord version, that one. It changes chord on every beat. I was once asked to write down all the chords to this version, so you can have it too.
Mairi’s Wedding is a gorgeous folk song that is a real delight to sing and play. I chose it as one of the numbers that everyone would play together in my most recent Big Fat Music Party because of its beautifully easy chord structure. It consists of the following three chords which repeat throughout the song. We played it in D, which was a good key for all our instruments and voices.
On the day we had two Guitars, two ukuleles, three people on the piano (one playing chords, two playing the melody) one fiddle, a few percussionists and lots of singers.
My great violin-playing students (I normally teach them piano) who are brother and sister couldn’t make the party, but when we were working on Mairi’s Wedding in their lesson, they came up with this brilliant easy double stopping accompaniment based on the rhythm of the first two bars. It sounded great when they played it together (one on tune, one on accompaniment, then swapping over).
Here it is-
I love that the D never alters even on the A chord, creating a compelling drone.
Before the party I videoed some of the lovely West London Folk Band (led by the brilliant Laurel Swift) playing the song so that my students could listen to it in the week.
The group tunes for this term’s Big Fat Music Party were all tunes recently rediscovered from my past. ‘Pick a Bale of Cotton’, a work song from the deep south made famous by Leadbelly, is a great one that I remember singing in a guitar group I used to attend as a child.
It is a two-chord song which can be played with one chord if necessary. Very repetitive and quite addictive to sing!
The chord structure consists entirely of the following four bars repeated.
We played it in E to suit the guitarists but you can easily put it in any key. It uses chords I and V. The key of C is good for ukuleles and the piano.
E is possibly the worst key for the ukulele, so I tuned the older players’ ukes up into D tuning (A D F# B) and they played it with D and A7 shapes. For the tinies, I tuned their ukuleles to an chord of E (G# lowB E highB) so they could strum freely. It sounded rich and banjo-like.
I recommend teaching the song with one chord at first, and then adding the second when they can play and sing it fluently.
This is a good simple ‘um cha’ pattern for the piano –
We played it in E, so I gave our pianist a super easy version –
When planning to get people together to create a band on the day, it’s essential to give them things to do that are easy enough for them to play without much effort so they can listen to what’s going on around them as they play, and react with other band members.
This song is great fun as you can make up your own verses. Children love it when you insert their name into the verse. (‘Me and ____ can pick a bale of cotton). For the party I randomly chose student’s names and had them printed big in advance for a bit of a surprise element.
Here is our raucous version-
And here is Leadbelly’s. I notice now that he speeds up, singing each verse faster and faster. I’ve GOT to do it this way next time!
I also had this picture printed up large to show everyone, and explained how each tiny bit of cotton had to be picked by hand from the flower. This is how big a bale of cotton actually is.
I held my 7th Big Fat Music Party the other week. These are my concerts that don’t feel so much like a concerts. I want to get away from the feelings of dread which seemed inseparable from performing to other people when I was growing up.
I try and encourage as much collaboration between students as I can. It is great to find well known songs where the chord sequence goes round in a loop throughout. In the past we have had great fun with ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’. This time we had three new numbers like this where everybody could join in. I have written a blog about each one with ideas and downloadable charts.
Apart from the group numbers, here are other things which create a relaxed feel and engage the audience:-
Hold the event in someone’s home. I initially asked the parents of some students who had a nice piano and large front room, and after that first one I had lots of offers from parents to host it at theirs.
Have chairs around the edge for the adults and cushions on the floor for the children. This sidesteps the formality of rows of chairs and allows the young students to bond.
Make younger siblings welcome. Let them dance and clap. Give them percussion for the big numbers.
Ask quiz questions about the pieces being played. This started when I once noticed that a lot of my students were learning music from film and TV, so we held a grand Big Fat Music Party film quiz. I was amazed at just how much this increased audience attention! Now I throw in a question here and there about the music we’re listening to. It engages and relaxes them at the same time. Hooray!
Get people to bring snacks so we can all have a good old nosh-up and chat afterwards. Quite often at this point a few children wander back to the abandoned piano and play music together.
I must say that probably my favourite aspect of the parties is watching the connections form between my students and their families. I see my students getting to know each other and bonding over their common subject – music. They see the friends they met before, make music together, and get to hear what each other are playing. This is so important. Music should not be a solitary occupation for children. How could that possibly succeed?
Knocking and Clapping in ‘Popcorn’ and ‘Short Legged Benjy’
There are two tunes in ‘Fun, Games and Party Pieces for Beginner Piano‘ with a percussive element where the pupils get to create a rhythm by a combination of knocking on the piano and clapping. I’m still amazed at how positively they all react to it. I recommend we piano teachers should add this element into some of the tunes from other tutor books to breathe some fresh air into them.
Here are the Angry Grey Stripy Muppets* demonstrating these two tunes. Firstly ‘Popcorn’: One reading the chord symbols to play an ‘um cha’ accompaniment on the piano, one on ukulele and one playing the tune.
And now ‘Short Legged Benjy’.
Apologies, the rather abrupt end to this one made me crack up behind the camera. Now I know why I suggested two verses in the book.
*The band name was decided after I drew massive dots and extended the stave in pencil to remind them to do the repeat. The dots looked like eyes and the whole ensemble was said to resemble an angry, grey, stripy Muppet. Obviously a perfect name for a band. Children today eh? No imagination.
‘Chinatown’ is proving popular with my pupils, and I figured if there is a song to go with it I can get lots of them joining in together at my next Big Fat Music Party.
Thanks to Bay and Katie for their help with the lyrics.
Conrad's Chords 