Lavender's Blue

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph
Hoffman
and today we're going to learn a famous
folk song from England called "Lavender's Blue"
which you might recognize from
Disney's 2015 version of Cinderella.
♫Lavender's blue dilly dilly, lavender's
green.♫
♫When you are king dilly dilly, I shall be queen.♫
♫Who told you so dilly
dilly, who told you so?♫
♫Twas my own heart dilly dilly, that told me so.♫
For "Lavenders Blue" we're going to need a
new solfège syllable.
So let's review the five we already know.
Can you sing along with me and make the hand signs? Here we go:
DO RE MI FA SO
Now "Lavenders Blue" we need one step
above SO which is called LA.
Kind of make a little arc shape with your hand.
Let's
try that one more time from the bottom.
Go:
DO RE MI FA SO LA
Now let's step back down starting on LA.
LA SO FA MI RE DO
Good job. Now, let's also review some of the intervals we've learned recently,
but using solfège.
So if we have DO then go up a second, which is another
word for a step,
we'd go: DO RE DO
Can you try that one with me
and do the hand signs? Go:
DO RE DO
Now let's try going up a third from DO.
That would be:
DO MI DO
Try that with me, go:
DO MI DO
Good, now let's go up a
fourth.
Can you think of the solfège syllable that would be a fourth above DO?
If you said FA, you're correct.
That would be: DO FA DO Try it with me:
DO FA DO
Now, what's up a fifth from DO?
If you said SO you're correct.
Let's try it together, go:
DO SO DO
Now here's our new one. If we go up a
sixth from DO, we'll land on LA like this:
DO LA DO Try it with me.
DO LA DO
Great job.
Now, I'm going to sing the
first line of "Lavender's Blue",
and I'd like you to try to help me figure out
the solfège for it.
Ready? Listen to the first few notes:
What would that be in solfège?
The correct answer is: DO SO SO SO
Now listen to the next four notes.
I'll add four notes to that pattern. We had:
What are those last few notes doing?
That's right, they're stepping down.
So it would be: FA MI RE DO
let's try it that far in solfège, go:
DO SO SO SO FA MI RE DO
Now listen to the next part.
If you listen carefully you'll hear that that's our new solfège syllable.
DO LA LA LA
Let's try the whole first line in solfège now, go:
DO SO SO SO FA MI RE DO
DO LA LA LA
Super, now let's see what that looks like on
the staff.
All right, here's what we just sang.
DO SO SO SO FA MI RE DO DO LA LA LA
Can you sing that with me and point your screen, go:
DO SO SO SO FA MI RE DO DO LA LA LA
And don't forget to hold that 3
beats because we have a dotted half note.
Now let's try to play that on the piano.
Can you tell me the letter name of the first note of this song?
If you said C or
middle C you're correct.
The sheet music tells us to place finger 1 on middle C.
So,
our position is the C major pentascale.
Now the first line will sound
like this:
DO SO SO SO FA MI RE DO DO LA LA LA
Did you
notice something tricky that happened?
LA is not in our pentascale. We have
DO RE MI FA SO
So when we have to do DO LA, I actually have to glide up one note higher than we're used to playing.
Okay, now what I recommend not doing is
just stretching your pinkie up.
Just glide your whole hand up that would be a
lot more comfortable.
It's not correct to stretch when you don't need to,
and your other fingers can just come along for the ride as you go up to that LA,
and then shift back down to the C pentascale for the next line.
Okay, watch one more
time.
We have: DO SO SO SO FA MI RE DO DO
Glide up to LA.
Now I'd like you to press pause and try that a few times on your own, then press play to go on.
Now one thing I want to mention about
playing these repeated SO's in your pinky,
is to not do what I call the karate chop.
Sometimes I see students go ♫Lavender's blue♫
and just like hack at that note ♫dilly, dilly, La--chop, chop, chop♫
No karate chopping. A, it gets all your other fingers
out of position, it kind of makes an ugly sound,
and it's not right for your pinky.
You want your pinky to play near the tip standing up,
never flat and never chopped.
Okay? Keep your pinky near the tip,
and that keeps your other fingers in a
better position.
And you'll play more beautifully. Just kind of think of
stroking that
note up high rather than chopping it.
Okay, so press pause one more
time and play it, and make sure
that you're not karat ...