My Ukelele Progress Levels - Songs to Play From The Beginning

At this point I am maybe an intermediate ukelele player; I can play Sing and Climb Every Mountain poorly in the key of C. These ukelele learning progress levels are mostly for myself. Maybe somebody else will find them useful. Let me know if you need specific chord charts for any of these songs.

General Notes:

1. Hyphen lists of chords (C-Am-F-G) represent progressions that occur at some point in a song.

2. Comma lists of chords (C, G7) are all the chords of a song in their order of appearance.

Level	New chords	New songs (easiest first)	Practical and theoretical notes
1	C	Some rounds: Are You Sleeping, Row Your Boat, Three Blind Mice	The common ukelele is a soprano ukelele. Its most natural or easiest key (scale) to play in is the key of C. For the key (scale) of C, C is the tonic chord (I), which is a foundation of music. Depending on the song, the key of C may not be easy to sing in, but that's the price of being a beginner. Later you can play also in the key of G to make most songs work reasonably well with your vocal range. Meanwhile, you can add a capo temporarily to at least practice more songs.
2	G7	Rounds variations, Down in the Valley, It Ain't Gonna Rain No More, Polly Wolly Doodle, La Cucaracha, The Wheels On The Bus	For the key of C, G7 is the dominant seventh chord (V7) that leads strongly (resolves) to the tonic chord C. This is a second foundation of music. Experiment with adding G7 to some of the rounds from Level 1.
3	F	Cielito Lindo, This Land Is My Land, Oh Danny Boy*, Oh Susanna, When They Ring Those Golden Bells*, Rock of Ages, How Great Thou Art, Purple People Eater, She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain, My Bonnie To Me, Joy To the World ¢ = capo, Silent Night ¢, Up On The Housetop ¢	For the key of C, F is the subdominant chord (IV) that leads to the tonic (I) in the plagal cadence (IV-I) or "Amen" (F-C). With the dominant G7 and the tonic C, the subdominant F opens up a universe of traditional songs (*at least in their simplest form). The plagal cadence (IV-I "Amen") is a nice way to end songs with the "Oh, yeah!" sound (What A Wonderful World).
4	Am	Heart and Soul, In The Still Of The Night, *A Teenager In Love, Duke of Earl, The Monster Mash, This Magic Moment, Who Put the Bomp, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Unchained Melody, Stand By Me*, Mandy	For the key of C, Am is the submediant (vi) chord. Adding it opens up the 50's chord progression I-vi-IV-I (C-Am-F-C). *Some of these songs sound better with a plain G instead of G7, and that's at level 6.
5	C7	This Land Is Your Land, When They Ring Those Golden Bells, Oh Danny Boy ("and all the flow'rs")	C7 is very easy to play, and since it is the dominant chord of the key of F, it is a great way to foreshadow the F chord leading into the chorus on later verses of songs including some of your earlier songs.
6	G, D7	Home on the Range ("deer" in chorus)	1. A super cool concept in music theory is secondary dominants or secondary function, in which any dominant seventh chord can resolve to the tonic chord of some key (scale). In the key of G, the dominant seventh is the D7 chord, and it can resolve to the G chord, which adds a really nice temporary "key of G" feel to these new songs. Remembering secondary function (and the "circle of fifths") is a huge trick for figuring out your way through songs by ear. 2. Now that you know how to play both the plain G and the G7 chords, you can add variation and nuance to some of your earlier songs by changing to G initially and then changing to G7 just when your artistic sense calls for its foreshadowing effect. You can also play the more "original" form of the 50's chord progression, which may make some of the Level 4 songs sound better.
7	Dm	Sincerely, When You Wish Upon A Star	1. This is the first, mild "finger squisher" chord. Three-finger squishers to come later (D, Eb, E). 2. You can use the Dm chord as a second verse or second phrase variation on the F chord in the 50s chord progression or other contexts (Perhaps Love). 3. Point 2 implies that the Dm chord (ii) may lead to the G chord (V). Noticing that Dm is a minor form of the dominant of the key of G is helpful because sometimes "circle of fifth" progressions want to alternate between minor and major like this (B7-Em-A7-Dm-G7-C as in "...goes, some things are meant to be. Take...." in Can't Help Falling in Love).
8	Em, B7	Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Shenandoah, Perhaps Love, O Holy Night, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus	These two three-finger chords are fun to learn together since your fingers stair-step up the frets identically for them both, making it delightfully easy to switch between them. Now we can play some fancy songs!
9	E7	What A Wonderful World (C-Em-F-C-F-C-E7-Am, F-G7-C-F-G)	Happily, E7 is not hard to play!
10	Fm	Home on the Range (last "word"), When They Ring Those Golden Bells ("...gether")	Fm is a hard chord to play. But it lets you add fancy endings to songs. Try adding it at the end of these songs.
11	C+, CMaj7	Let There Be Peace On Earth (CMaj7 before "Let me/us walk..." and C+ at last "... there be ... ")	These new "fancy" chords are very easy to play, and they add nice nuances.
12	A7	Can't Help Falling In Love (Em-B7-Em-B7-Em-B7-Em-A7-Dm-G)	As we spend more time (even temporarily) in the key of G, we find the need for the dominant chain ("circle of fifths") A7-D-D7-G
13	Gm	Sing (C, CMaj7, Am, F, Dm, G, G7, C7, D7, Gm, Fm)	Gm is related to C7, and in "Sing" at the climax note "long", we could play C7, but it sounds a little better to play Gm.
14	Cm, D	Climb Every Mountain (C, D7, G, Gm, C, Am, Fm, C, G7, CMaj7, C7, A7, D, Em, C+)	Cm and D look similar on a ukelele chord chart, but where Cm is an easy three-string bar chord, D is a challenge. Both arise from being in the key of G, with Cm acting like Fm (iv) and C acting like G (V).

A cappella doo wop mingle and sing Mesa AZ April 6

I'm inviting my people to mingle and sing with me at an a cappella doo wop night at City of Mesa Fire Station 202 at 830 S Stapley Drive on Thursday April 6. You are very welcome to invite others including interested youths. Please let me know if you want to be reminded.

My first principle of music composition philosophy

I am the George W. Bush of music composition. I am embarking on it (as he did with painting) in earnest at the age of 55 mostly for my own enjoyment. But here's a first principle of my composition philosophy:

Don't confuse the listener.

Favorite sing-along songs

This is a carefully curated list of songs that go over well when I am in sing-along jam sessions. (Many other cool songs turn out to be a bit hard for sing-alongs.) For instrument chords, search the web for the title plus the word "chords" (ultimate-guitar.com is a good site I will be working to improve).

Do-Re-Mi Complete Production Number Lyrics (Script) with instructions

Maria sings this song with the seven Von Trapp children. Choose a role before starting or ad lib through the number.

This Little Piggy Went to Market Barbershop Quartet song

In 1991 when I was a student at Brigham Young University, I sang with a barbershop quartet called The Minutemen. My favorite of all the songs we sang was This Little Piggy Went to Market, as sung by the Bluegrass Student Union international champion quartet.

I recently had a chance to teach This Little Piggy Went to Market to a quartet from church for a talent show. Our score was very hard to read, and the song was absent from any internet searching, so I subsequently typed the song into Melody Assistant and Musescore, rearranging some troublesome rhythms.

Here are the lyrics:

I remember many dear old love songs, rhapsodies and symphonies galore,
But a melody my mother sang to me still haunts me. How I always will adore

This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy had roast beef. This little piggy had none.

How I recall my dear old mother putting me to bed.
She tucked me in and said to her cute little sleepy head,

This little piggy was a bad little piggy who cried all the way home.
Years have passed, but it's still my favorite poem.

I dream and pray someday I'll say to a cute little baby of my own,
This little piggy went to market and this little piggy stayed home.

This is a Minuteman performance I put at Youtube

This is a stereo midi file that's really good for learning the parts

This is a pdf file of the written score

Note: There's a difference between the midi and the pdf in that I flipped the Tenor and the Lead on the last two measures. I believe the midi is better. The Lead should stay on the melody all the way to the end.

Free Libre Music Notation Software Search Part 2

In Part 1 I introduced my search to upgrade from Melody Assistant to FLOSS, and I listed the main FLOSS Music notation software I found, together with the operating systems they run on. Since then I have installed the following:

• Lilypond in Windows XP
• MuseScore 0.9.4 in Windows XP
• Denemo in Windows XP (0.8.2) and Ubuntu Linux 8.10 (Denemo includes Lilypond since it is a Lilypond GUI front end.)
• Canorus 0.5 in Windows XP

My hope was to take a song I had entered into Melody Assistant (which I really have enjoyed over the years) and somehow pipe it through as many programs as required to come out the other end unharmed and ready to print. Alas, it was not that easy. The song did not yet have lyrics. It was a barbershop quartet song in four voices on two staffs (Youtube video here). Melody Assistant had trouble directing stem, note-head, accidental, and other mark traffic between the two voices on each staff, and it seemed to me I would be forever fine-tuning spacing if I didn't upgrade. This is what it looked like in Melody Assistant.





First Canorus 0.5. Canorus and I never did hit it off very well. The interface is pretty and inviting enough. It may be a great piece of software now or soon. But the task at hand was all about data transfer, and Canorus does not yet have any Import capabilities to speak of. Also, I was pre-conditioned by my reasearch to expectslow development from Canorus (though I see 0.7 was released March 10). Also on the bad side, Canorus file dialogs don't work properly with the Windows My Documents folder. I do like the promise of close interface with Lilypond including raw data file editing.

Second Denemo. My Ubuntu version was not as advanced as my Windows version 0.8.2. (Why do I experience this often with Ubuntu?). From the start, identical with Canorus, the file dialogs don't work right with Windows. The midi file from Melody Assistant did import, but not as well as with MuseScore 0.9.4. View scrolling didn't work well. It wasn't apparent how to get the midi playback to work in either Windows or Ubuntu Linux. I didn't go far with Denemo.

I finished my task with MuseScore 0.9.4. The midi file came in on four separate staffs, which I was not able (even with forum help) to combine into two. I had to re-enter two of the voices. In the process, I fell in love with the MuseScore entry keys. QWERTY A, B, C, D, E, F, and G enter notes, with MuseScore guessing the octave and CTRL+UP or CTRL+DOWN correcting octave mistakes. 10-key (or other) numbers and dot select note durations. S adds a slur, and + adds a tie, with SHIFT+RIGHT extending them further. With slight conditioning, I was moving right along in my note entry at a speed I never attained with Melody Assistant. I had wondered about their choice of keys (which I understand are customizable), but I ended up sold. Muse Score spaced all notes well before and after I added lyrics. It flipped stems well when I added the Lead part below the Tenor part on the Octava bassa (Treble) staff. Due to a strange glitch it didn't flip them when I added the Bass part below the Baritone part, so I had to flip the stem for each note or beam set individually using the "x" key and the arrow keys to advance. The final printed score looks great. I had to manually shorten only two beam sets due to conflicts with the lyrics, and it was a simple matter of double-clicking the beam to do this. I was disappointed with Muse Score's export to Lilypond. The lyrics didn't survive. Nor did the stem directions for the two-voiced staves. But Muse Score's native printing is admirable and sufficient for my present need. This (other than a MuseScore PNG export glitch) is what it looked like from MuseScore.





I will probably remember to try all three (Denemo, Lilypond, and Canorus) next time I have a task. And if I am in Linux more regularly at that time, I will also try Rosegarden.

If the developers are listening, my parting message to them this time is, "It's the data, buddy!" We want not only Libre software, but Libre Data. Please put emphasis on accurate imports and exports with Lilypond, MusicXML, and midi, or whatever you know is best (I don't). We write music to communicate, to share. Please let us do that by freeing your data.

Update March 21, 2009: MuseScore (not Muse Score or Musescore) appears to be the correct "brand" name.

Update March 18, 2018: MuseScore is what I have been using all the time.

Free Libre Music Notation Software Search

I'm looking to start using Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) for my occasional music notation and midi creation. I bought Myriad's Melody Assistant ages ago and have used it pretty happily, but I now have a piece I would like to print with a little higher quality notation, so I'd like to upgrade to Myriad's Harmony Assistant or go some other way. I have Linux up and running, but at the moment, Windows is still more convenient for me.

Here's my summary that's perhaps more up to date and contributes in some way beyond Dave Phillips's Feb 2008 summary.

I'm looking into:

• Lilypond (Linux/Win). The standard music engraver. But I don't want to write text files directly. I want a GUI with audio playback. All the GUI packages export for Lilypad.
  
• Denemo (Linux/Win). Front end GUI for Lilypond, but not very popular.
  
• Noteedit (Linux only). Dead project, but still very popular.
  
• Rosegarden (Linux only ). Widely used.
  
• Canorus (Linux/Win). A successor to Noteedit. People have high hopes, but slow development.
  
• Musescore (Linux/Win/Mac). Very new. Lot of excitement. Mac version not incorporated into main branch yet.
  
• Nted (Linux only). A successor from the founder of Noteedit.

I downloaded Lilypond and Musescore to a WinXP machine so far, and I hope to post again when I have some further results.

See Part 2