Functional and Free!
When I came up with my treble and bass lines and spaces songs, it was when I, and most of you, had been thrust overnight into remote teaching, in early 2020. I was hoping to lighten the mood a bit by writing silly lyrics to go with four skips-on-the-staff motifs. Whether you love or loathe mnemonic devices such as, “All Cows Eat Grass,” or “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” etc., I think it’s fair to say that these tunes are not that. Rather, they are humorous little melodies that provide a fun way for students to play, and hopefully sing, an entire silly song, giving them actual “on-the-road” experience in reading and playing every line or space on a single staff. That’s a different experience than memorizing a sentence about cows, boys, or girls that has nothing to do with the music one is learning to play.
Treble Clef Lines Song
This one is a waltz on one staff with notes split between the hands. There is a nod to the lamented (or lauded!) “Every good boy,” but it’s found in an actual chorus with notes to match the lyric: “Ev’ry girl and ev’ry guy say, ‘B-D, B-D. “Ev’ry girl and ev’ry guy say, ‘B-D-F-D.’“ You wouldn’t think it, but there’s a surprisingly addictive hook/ear worm in there. You could sort of make a case that this one is in the key of G Major, but there are probably some excellent theorists out there who would identify it modally instead.
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Treble Clef Spaces Song
The “Treble Clef Spaces Song” is in common time and tells the story of someone who is appalled when they look in the mirror and see something on their face. “What’s on my F-A-C-E? Don’t laugh, it’s not comedy!” Sing this yourself, and you’ll be cured of any difficulty you may have heretofore had singing an F Major 7 chord! A favorite part for students is at the very end when the subject of the song discovers the reason for their angst and abruptly ends the song with, “so it’s all good now. Bye!” The tonal center for this one is F Major.
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Bass Clef Lines Song
Moving down to the “Bass Clef Lines Song,” you won’t find even a hint of a familiar mnemonic. Well, that’s not completely true - there’s one: “D’s in the Middle” of “Hey Diddle Diddle, D’s in the middle” fame. The student learns to orient him- or herself on the bass staff by standing, so to speak, on the middle line, and doing a call-out to the lines above and below. “D’s in the Middle, up here F-A. D’s in the middle, down here G-B.” Of the four songs, this quadruple meter one has the least preposterous lyrics. It has a bit of a blues feel to it, and I think it’s fun to have a student move quickly from the left side of the bench, around me, to the right side to play the notes below and above D, while I sit in the middle and only play the D’s. An easier version of this activity is to have the student sit on the bench and play only the D’s while the teacher comically tries to move from the student’s left side to their right to play all of the other notes.
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Bass Clef Spaces Song
Finally, the “Bass Clef Spaces Song” provides a veritable alphabet of A, C, E, and G words set in lilting three-four time. For example: “Apple Cake, alligator, cocoa caf-A,” and “Elephant, gabby goose, elegant Earl Grey.” The opening three notes might remind you of “A Bicycle Built For Two,” until the fourth note throws you off. I personally like teaching this one for it’s rhythmic value. I find that young students today seem to have a more difficult time feeling triple meter than they might if more waltzes were a part of the pop music canon. This waltz is definitely best felt in one, and, for that reason, it may very well be a new wrinkle for the student’s brain, as my grandfather would have put it.
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Final thoughts…
Now that I’m doing mostly in-person teaching again, I hope to use these four songs in group lessons in order to reinforce note-reading, break the ice before we get down to more serious business, or simply to allow students to giggle while singing these silly lyrics together.
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