Greensleeves

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today we're going to be learning a very old
and famous folk tune from England "Greensleeves," hence the green sleeves.
Ha ha, very funny Mr. Hoffman.
Oh, thank you Scuba. I thought you might like that one.
It so happens that the melody "Greensleeves", which we are listening to right now, that's the same melody used in the well-known Christmas carol
"What Child Is This".
I love that Christmas song!
I do too. It's beautiful, isn't it?
Um, Mr. Hoffman? Who composed "Greensleeves"?
Well Scuba, the melody for "Greensleeves" was composed by someone so long ago, hundreds of years ago back in the 16th century we think.
But it was basically written so long ago that nobody knows or remembers who the composer was.
The best folk songs simply get passed from person to person, generation to generation.
The best music simply lives on because the melodies have something special that makes them stay with us.
I see. This melody really does have a special sound to it.
I'm glad you like it. Well, let's check out the sheet music to get started learning it.
Here's the sheet music for "Greensleeves". Let's analyze this score.
We're going to be playing gently flowing, and
if you notice we just have a treble staff here, which tells us will be in lead sheet style.
That means we've just got the melody notated with chord symbols up above.
Today we'll learn how to play the melody, and in a later lesson we'll add in an accompaniment using the chord symbols.
But, these chord symbols may come in handy to analyze what key we are in.
Do you see a key signature?
We've got our clef, we've got a time signature, in between there is normally where we'd place some flats or sharps
if we had a key signature with flats or sharps. Since we don't see any flats or sharps there,
that tells us we're in one of which two keys?
We're either in C major or A minor.
From our ladder of fourths or fifths, those are the two keys that have zero sharps or flats.
So how do we know which one?
Well take a look at the first note, or possibly the first chord and that's a clue.
What key do you predict that we are in?
If you said A minor, you're correct. The melody begins on an A,
our first chord is A minor, if you look at the last note end chord, we have an A and we have an A minor chord.
Clearly from our key signature, our starting and ending notes, we know we're in A minor.
Now, what is our time signature?
It's 6/8.
Let's see I'll go right here. 6/8, you'll recall from an earlier lesson, simply means that there are 6
eighth note beats per measure.
Instead of counting every quarter note as 1 beat, we're counting every eighth note as 1 beat, and there's 6 of them in every measure.
The thing is, if you look at this first measure, do you see six eighth notes in that measure?
No, because sometimes in music we have what's called a pick up beat,
where we don't begin on beat 1.
Remember, these bar lines show you where beat 1 is. We know the first note or rest after a bar line is always beat 1,
and beat 1 is our strong beat. It's where the emphasis in the music lies,
but sometimes in music you don't want to start on a strong beat.
So if we count backwards from beat 1, what would be the last beat in the measure? Here's an eighth note.
It has to be beat 6 counting backwards from the bar line.
So we know the last beat of the measure is beat 6.
so here we start with 6 1.
And that gives the sound that the original composer, again whoever that was,
they didn't want a sound of:
They wanted:
A more gentle sound. 6 1,
and then remember because eighth notes are our beat, a quarter note has to be 2 beats.
Because you can fit two eighth notes inside one quarter note right?
So, we have 2 beats for this quarter note. 6 1 2 Here's beat 3.
Now here we have a dotted eighth note. Remember, an eighth note equals 1 beat.
So when we add a dot to a note it extends it by 50%, or by half. So instead of just 1 beat, it's going to get 1 and 1/2 beats.
So we're going to give it the first half of beat 5. The second half of beat 5 belongs to this sixteenth note.
4 5-& That & will sit right in between beats 5 and 6. Remember, the & marks the halfway point between beats.
Beats 4 5-& 6
Let's listen to this rhythm. We get:
4 5-& 6 Can you tap and count that with me? Let's just count 4 5-& 6 while you tap that rhythm on your lap or anywhere you like.
Ready, count it with me, go. 4 5-& 6 Again, go: 4 5-& 6
In this song that will be:
4 5-& 6 It has kind of a little lilting sound. This rhythm is fairly common in 6/8 meter. So it has such a fun lilt to it.
6 1 2 3 4 5-& 6
Can you try tapping and counting this rhythm?
Let's start right here on beat 6. I'll count 5 beats to get us read ...