Down by the Bay

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph
Hoffman
and today we're going to learn how to
play the traditional song "Down by the Bay".
"Down by the Bay" is a fun and kind of
a silly song. It's perfect for around a
campfire at night or long road trips. To
sing it for you today, I've invited in my
friends Scuba and Princess. Hi guys! Hey
Mr. Hoffman! Thanks for joining me today.
Well thanks for inviting us. Yeah! Are you
two ready to sing? You bet! Hey did I hear
there's gonna be some singing? That's
right, would you like to join us? That's
okay isn't it Mr. Hoffman? Of course it's
okay, we'd love to have you join us Chef.
Oh boy I love this song.
Okay here we go.
♫Down by the bay, where the watermelons grow, back to my home, I dare not go♫
♫For if I do, my mother will say,♫ Take it Chef! ♫Did you ever see a goose missing moose♫
♫Down by the bay! Down by the bay, where the watermelons grow, back to my home, I dare not go♫
♫For if I do, my mother will say, did you ever see a llama wearing pink pajamas, down by the bay!♫
So, one thing that's fun to do, is to keep singing the song over and over and people take turns making up
different 'did you ever's for the end of
the song, and the trick is to try and
think of something that rhymes. Like, ♫Did you ever see a goat sailing on a boat♫ or how about,
♫Did you ever see a flea dancing on a tree♫
Exactly, so everyone sings the
main part of the song and then when you
get to the end, someone takes a turn
doing a solo and improvises a silly
'did you ever'. Then everyone finishes up with, ♫Down by the bay!♫ Nice, thanks for singing with me
everyone. You're welcome. Yeah thanks for
inviting us! We had a great time, bye! See you
later! And now it's time to check out the
score.
Here's the sheet music for "Down by the Bay".
You'll notice this time it's in
lead sheet style. We just have the treble
clef part and the melody line. The
left-hand part, which we'll learn in a
later lesson,
is going to be improvised using these
chord symbols. Now let's check out the
key signature for "Down by the Bay".
We have two flats. Now whenever you see
flats in the key signature, we'll refer
to our ladder of fourths.
From the ladder of fourths, we can see that we'll be in
the key of B-flat major or possibly G
minor. So we'll want to look at the first
note of the song which is
an F, and the last note which is a B or
because of the key signature, B-flat.
Since we end on a B-flat, we can tell
that we're in the key of B-flat major.
Now let's check out our time signature
and tempo indication. We're in 4/4 time
and the tempo indication says relaxed swing.
Now we're used to seeing words
like largo or allegretto or allegro up
here., Italian words, but sometimes in
popular songs we use more casual English
phrases, like relaxed swing. So this song
should be played relaxed and when you
see the word 'swing' in the tempo
indication, that's a composers way of
saying to swing the eighth notes.
Remember that usually when we see eighth
notes, we perform them like this.
TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TI That's called straight eighth
notes, where every eighth note has an
equal amount of time, but when you see
the word 'swing', the first of a group of
two eighth notes will be a little bit
longer and the second one will be a
little bit shorter like this, DO-BEH-DO-BEH-DO-BEH
And that's a more popular
and sometimes jazzy style. So this
instead of 'where the watermelons grow'
will be ♫where the watermelons grow♫ TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TI
1 2 3 4 So let's try the
rhythm together. We're going to count out
loud. Notice that on beat 1 we have a
rest.
The first tap will be on beat 2, so
we'll tap the rhythm while we count it out loud.
Can you count the beat with me
out loud while you tap the rhythm?
I'll count 4 beats to get us started,
and then we'll start here on beat 1.
Here we go, 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3
4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3
4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 Now let's pause for a moment.
Do you remember what kind of rest this is?
This is a half rest.
Remember, if that black rectangle sits on top of the line, which kind of
makes it look like a hat.
Like so, see how
it's kind of like a hat. Hat sounds like
half, and a half rest gets 2 beats. So
we have beat 1 2 and then this
quarter rest gets one more beat. So we
have 3 beats of silence there,
1 2 3 TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TA. Remember these are
not straight. Straight would be TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TA
But we're 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 Let's try this
line togethe ...