Bagpipe

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman.
Today we're going to learn an old
bagpipe melody that comes from hundreds of years ago.
A bagpipe is a musical
instrument with a very distinctive sound.
Let's have a listen.
Bagpipes are used for special
ceremonies and in the military.
You see them most often in places like Canada and
the United Kingdom, especially Scotland.
Now, let's take a look at the score for "Bagpipe".
For starters, I'll play "Bagpipe" for you while
you follow along by watching the score.
Now, let's take a minute to analyze the
score for "Bagpipe".
Just take a look and see if there any symbols that jump out for you.
One symbol that may be new for you is this
symbol which is called a forte marking.
Anytime you see these kind of fancy looking letters in music, those are called dynamic markings,
and they tell you how loud or soft to play.
F stands for forte,
which means to play with strength loudly.
And whenever you
see a dynamic mark, all the notes that come after it,
starting with the note it is lined up with,
all of these notes will be played forte.
Then you might have noticed this repeat sign,
so we'll go back and play it again forte.
Play all those notes.
Now down here on line two we have another dynamic marking.
And P stands for piano.
Now the piano obviously means the
thing with black and white keys that you play on, but piano also has another meaning.
Piano in Italian also means soft.
So all of these notes you'll play softly.
Now other things we should
always check out are the clefs.
We have our treble clef for this top staff,
and down here we have a bass staff.
Today we'll just be learning the notes on
the treble staff.
And then we should check our time signature.
Our time signature is 4/4,
and that top number tells us how many beats we will
have in every measure.
Now, let's check out the rhythm of line one of "Bagpipe".
Can you point and speak the rhythm words with me?
We're going to say TA for the quarter notes, TI-TI for the eighth notes, and TWO-OO for the half note.
Let's say it together with a good steady beat.
Can you point on your screen with me, and let's
say the rhythm words. Ready, go:
TA TA TA TA
TA TI-TI TA TA
TA TA TA TA
TA TA TWO-OO, and then it repeats.
But, now,
instead of going back and doing the repeat,
let's work on counting
the beat, which we've recently learned how to
do.
Remember, there's two ways to count rhythms. We can use the rhythm syllables like we just did: TA and TI-TI,
or we can count the beat
while we tap the rhythms. So,
Every quarter note gets one beat.
So that measure would just be: 1
Let me point up here: 1 2 3 4
Now, here in measure two,
remember that two eighth notes share a beat.
So I put a circle around them to remind you that
everything in that circle is one beat.
Here's beat 1.
Here's beat 2.
Here's beat 3.
Here's beat 4.
Let me make that a little bit darker.
There's beat 4. So we have be 1, beat 2, beat 3,
beat 4, so while you're saying 2, you actually have to tap twice like this:
1 2 3 4
And sometimes people say 2 & 3,
but I just like to say 2 once: 2 3 4
1 2 3 4 Can you count that
beat with me while you tap that rhythm?
Go:
1 2 3 4
Good, then this
measure we have 1 2 3 4, then
1 2 3 4
This half note gets 2 beats.
So it's: 3
4 There's kind of this invisible beat 4. This
half note
takes up 2 beats. So you have to think of both of those beats
even though it's invisible.
Remember that it's still there.
Even if you can't see it.
It's lurking at the end of that measure.
So, try tapping this measure with me and counting, go:
1 2 3 4
So you say 3 and 4, but you only tap on
beat 3, and then you hold through beat 4.
Great, now let's try this whole line together
while you count out loud and tap
the beat with me. You can just tap on your lap
or on any other flat surface nearby.
So tap and count, ready go:
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4 repeat,
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
Now one last thing I want to analyze before we play this, and that is to hunt for any skips.
You should be pretty good by now at recognizing
steps and skips.
Remember, a step always goes from a line to a space, or a space to a line so here it's easy to see
those are stepping down.
But how do you recognize a skip?
Well,
it's going to go farther like maybe from this line to this line.
So, let's find all of those and I'm going to use a blue highlighter
to help me identify where there are ...