All the Pretty Horses: Melody

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman. Today we are going to learn to play the melody of a beautiful folk song, which is also a kind of lullaby. "All the Pretty Horses." Let's have a listen. ♫Hush-a-bye, don't you cry, go to sleep my little baby♫ ♫When you wake you shall have all the pretty little horses♫ ♫Blacks and bays, dapples and grays, coach and six a little horses.♫ ♫Hush-a-bye, don't you cry go to sleep my little baby♫ With this song, we're actually going to do something special. We're going to learn how to play it as a duet. You may recall from before that a duet is when two people play music together. Today we'll just learn the melody, and then in our next lesson I'll also teach you how to play the accompaniment. Friend or family member and invite him or her to also learn either the melody or the accompaniment, and then the two of you could play this as a duet. One on the melody, the other on the accompaniment. Now, let's get started learning the melody. Here's the sheet music for "All the Pretty Horses." What do you notice? You probably notice from now on you're going to be seeing this kind of tempo indication at the start of each of our pieces or songs. Andante, do you remember what that means? Andante is our tempo indication for a medium slow relaxed tempo. You might have noticed these chord symbols which we'll be working on in another lesson, but today we'll be learning the melody. Treble and bass clef as usual. What is our time signature? It's 4/4. Now let's check out our rhythms. We start off with pretty straightforward quarter note, quarter note, half note, quarter note, quarter note, half note, and then here's a dotted quarter note. Remember that a dotted quarter note equals 1 1/2 beats. Sometimes my students say, wait I thought that got 3 beats! No, no, no. That's the dotted half note. That equals 3 beats, but a dotted quarter note equals 1 1/2. Remember that a dot adds half of your original value. So with a half note, your original value is 2, so a dot adds 1. With a quarter note, your original value is 1, so the dot adds a 1/2 of a beat. So for counting this, because this is equal to 1 1/2 beats, it gets 1-& then it gets the first half of beat 2, and this flagged eighth note gets the other half of beat 2, and then from there we could add beat 3-&, and then what kind of note is this? A flagged eighth note gets the same amount of time as a beamed eighth note has the same rhythmic value. It's just a flag because the other half of the beat is a rest, and that is an eighth rest which also takes half of the beat. So this rhythm would be: 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& and you notice on this & the melody goes down to the left hand. So even though the right hand is resting, the melody carries on by dropping down into the left hand. Now I'd like you to pause the video and write in the subdivided beat like this. You're going to take every beat. So this quarter rest gets the 1 and the &. Remember that & just represents the other half of the beat. So 1-&, and sometimes it's the left hand that's playing, and that's why you see that rest there in the right hand part. 2-& Try and make your beats and the &s line up with the correct note. So since this note starts on beat 3, I want to make sure my 3 lines up with it. Pause the video and write in the counts for this entire first line, then press play and we'll try it together. Okay, here's what you should have written into your music. Let's try tapping this rhythm while we count the beat out loud. Now if you want you can use your left hand to tap any notes down here in the bass staff, and you can use your right hand for any notes up in the treble staff. I'm going to be pointing with my left hand. So I'm going to do both hands with my right hand. So it's up to you how you want to do that. I'll count 4 beats, and then we'll start here on beat 1. Count and tap with me. 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& Let's try to play it. Alright let's figure out our position for this song. Where will we place our hands? Start by looking at the first note in the left hand which is A, and you'll see the number 2, which tells us finger number 2 of the left hand will cover up A right below middle C. Right hand what is the first note? We have an E played with finger 3. Now that's how you figure out your position. Because we don't see any sharps or flats in the sheet music, we know we're going to be on all white keys, and our finger 1s will actually be right next door to each other. Now, what I'd like you to do is without my help see if you can figure out how to play the first two measures of "All the Pretty Horses." Press pause and try it a few times on your own and then press play when you're ready to hear me play it. Okay, here's what you should have played: A E E D C D If that's what it sounded like when you played, then we're good to go on. Otherwise just rewind, try it a few more times, or press pause to figure it out Now, let's go on to measure three and four. What note do we start on here in measure three? If you said a G you're correct. ...