Lady, Lady (Unit 5)

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson we're going to learn how to play a traditional folk song "Lady, Lady." Let's have a listen. Thank you Princess for singing today. You're welcome! Come on Baby, want to help me do some more sweeping? Sometimes a student asks me why does the song say 'buy a broom for my baby'? Babies don't use brooms. Can you imagine a baby sweeping? Okay, well most babies don't know how to use a broom. You're a pretty special baby. Yeah! But here's what this song is really talking about. This song is a folk song from long ago when a poor mother would go out in the market every day with brooms she had made by hand. This mother has a baby and not even enough money to buy food. So to try and sell more brooms, she sings to all the ladies walking by about the broom and all it can do. She also sings about her baby so people will feel sorry for her. Even if you don't really need a broom, she asks them to buy a broom for my baby. In other words, please buy my broom so I'll have enough money to feed my poor baby. Hungry! Buy broom for me! Oh, poor little thing. I'll buy a broom. Thank you. Here's our score for "Lady, Lady." So take just a minute and see what you notice. You might notice we're in our grand staff with the treble and bass clef. What's our time signature? If you said 3/4 you're correct. What else do you notice? You might notice a repeat sign. Lots of flats. You also might notice a new kind of symbol. Now this looks a lot like a tie, but you'll remember that a tie connects two of the same pitch. Are these two notes the same pitch? To be the same pitch you have to be in the exact same position high and low on the staff. You can see this note skips down. Two different pitches connected by a curved line it's called a slur. A slur is a curved line connecting two or more notes of a different pitch. Like, you'll see this longer slur over here that actually goes so long it goes off the edge of the page and continues over here to connect all of these notes. Notes connected with a slur are to be played legato. Legato is a fancy music word for smooth means the notes will go: Very smoothly from one note to the next. Let's find all the slurs. We've got one here, here, this is a long slur that goes off the edge continues here. A slur, a slur. Now before I go on to these last two lines, I'd like you to hunt for it. There is one and only one tie in this song. Can you look through, most of these are slurs, but can you find and point to me, point out to me where the tie is? If you're pointing right here at the end you're correct. Notice that these are two of the same pitch and that's the rule for it to be a tie even though this curved line really looks similar to all of these. It means something totally different. Remember ties you hold that one note for the value of both added together. 3 plus 3. So we hold this note for 6 beats. All of these curved lines simply mean to play these notes legato. Now let's figure out the rhythms for this song. We're going to write in counts like we've done before to help us with the rhythms, and try to line up the counts with the notes in the measure. So if you haven't already, pause the video and download and print out your sheet music so you can write the counts into your own music, and let's just go up to how about we do it up to the repeat sign. Right in the counts 1 2 3 beats per measure, and then press play and we'll try it together. Alright here's what the count should look like. Again just going up to the repeat sign Let's tap our rhythm while we count the beat out loud. I'll count 3 beats to get us started and then we'll start here on beat 1. Ready, tap it with me and count the beat out loud. 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 and let's skip the repeat just to save some time. Now pause the video again and can you write in the counts for the next eight measures. So let's stop right here now. Okay here's what the count should look like. Now let's try and tap and count. So count the beat out loud. We're going to start right here after I give you 3 beats to get ready. Here we go 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 Last thing I'd like to do before we try playing it, is to figure out the solfège for this first section. This song is in the key of E-flat major. Now in the key of E-flat major we need to figure out what note this is in solfège, but first let's figure out the letter name. Can you tell me the letter name for this pitch? If you said B-flat you're correct. Now thinking about the E-flat major pentascale, what is B-flat? Well, in the E-flat major pentascale B-flat is a SO. I'm going to write an S for SO over that note and then we skip down from this line, skipping down to the next line would be what solfège syllable? If you said MI you're correct. SO MI, then what are these next two solfège syllables? If you said SO MI you're correct. Then we step down. What's a step below MI? RE And then it repeats RE Then what would we have here? If you said SO you're correct. A fourth above RE is back to SO, or you might have remembered oh that's B-flat which is our SO again. SO SO SO RE RE SO SO SO Now here is tricky because we're going down a line, so ...