Part II: Piggybacking Melodies
A portion of the material presented is adapted from posts on In Harmony – A music education blog from Heritage
Music Press
Hello, everyone. Ms. Brigid here, from Merit School of Music in
Chicago, IL. Thank you for joining me. I'm thankful for you, for my family, friends, and the opportunity to teach and learn from my kiddos. I'm thankful for the Husband, the Daughter, the Herd (Bing & Chico), a house that doesn't flood anymore, a body that creaks along fairly well, gardens, having music and books to sing and an iPad -so that I can feed my appadiction. Here we go!
An App to Love
Before we get to the main topic of this post, I’d like
to share a recently discovered note taking/ brain mapping app: Popplet Lite. The FREE version is, well,
free, and once your “popplet” is created, it can be exported via email as a pdf
or jpeg. It can also be saved as a jpeg on your iPad’s camera roll. The limitation? Popplet Lite has no
archiving ability. Upgrade to Popplet (4.99) for a host of additional options,
including web sharing. For my purposes, the lite
version is fine. I used it, below, to demonstrate ideas for turning Eric
Carle’s ubiquitous EC classic into a singing book.
Sing a book? How?
In Part
I, I wrote about ways to add musical books to the classroom repertoire. A quick recap: Choose a song that has
been made into a book, like What
a Wonderful World or Little
White Duck. Since both these
books are linked with famous recordings, one extension option includes turning
pages while the soundtrack is playing. This works best with songs that are not
sung at a breakneck speed, e.g. My
Favorite Things. The song is just
too fast to turn the pages to, though
I would certainly encourage including it as a piece to listen and/or move
to.
Another type of book to look for and sing is one that
references a well-known melody. Examples include I Aint’s Gonna Paint No More (It Ain’t
Gonna Rain No More), The
Aunts Go Marching (The Ants Go Marching),
and The
Seals on the Bus- one of the many
books based on The Wheels of the Bus. These books wouldn’t work as well,
or at all, if they didn’t have a very specific song and melody as their
foundation.
But wait, there’s
more! Piggybacking Melodies
For books that don’t have their own melody, use a shared, or
“piggyback” melody, to carry the
text. Many rhyming books for young audiences share a similar syllabic count. Try piggybacking books to common
melodies including London Bridge, Frere Jacques, Skip To My
Lou, Twinkle, etc.
Choose whatever melody complements the text best.
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| http://www.babble.com/pets/pigs-the-piranhas-of-the-farm-world/ |
Many use this “piggyback” technique already, with no
understanding of how/why it works, and what an accessible tool this is. Certainly
that was the case with me, until I attended, by chance, the Imagination Education Conference for Everyone! at National Louis
University (created by friend, Kristin
Lems), and sat in on a children’s books workshop given by author W. Nicola-Lisa.
A chance statement
changed forever how I would approach singing (many) children’s books. At one point, Nicola-Lisa opened an
uncut, two-sided galley (for lack of a better word), of one his children’s
books to dramatically illustrate the point that children’s book are a certain,
standardized, number of pages, due to printing / cutting / binding mechanics.
The galley must have been 8’ x 8’ – or larger, with print
and image going in various directions on successive page – and looked like a
fabulous quilt! He cited examples
where he had to extend an idea to fit into this format. He claimed that most
children’s books were multiples of eight, the most common being 24 or 32 pages.
Up to that point, I had never given any thought to the format, structure and
pagination of children’s books, but when I got home, I devoted myself to
counting the pages of my books – and he was right!
At some point, a connection was made between the number of
syllables on each page, and the syllabication of nursery rhymes. To complete
the process, I tested my hypothesis on random books, the first being One
Red Rooster. There are so many reasons I adore this book besides the rhyming text: Suzette Barbier's illustrations are charming, text is printed in large font, the images are additive, it teaches numbers and colors, the framing device on each page - and more! To my delight, I discovered the text could be sung to a number
of nursery rhyme melodies, including Skip
to My Lou and London Bridge. Click on the links below each book to hear it sung.
 |
| Skip to My Lou |
|
| London Bridge |
The Power of Process!
As part of a recent music and literacy workshop I conducted for Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society at the Mount Prospect
Library, attendees tried out this simple strategy of piggybacking
the text to familiar, child-friendly melodies. I provided picture books
from my collection – and all had multiple solutions.
 |
| Books for Piggybacking Melodies |
1) As a group exercise, I asked the group to compile a list of common children’ songs, then wrote the titles on a whiteboard. In took just a minute or two to come up with this list: Row
Your Boat, Happy Birthday, Twinkle, Skinnamarink, Frere Jacques, Oat, Peas,
Beans and Barley (one song), London Bridge, The Bear Went Over the Mountain, Oh
McDonald Had a Farm, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Shoe Fly, Itsy Bitsy Spider, You
Are My Sunshine, Wheels on the Bus, and Skip
to My Lou. Only a few of these have known composers.
2) Attendees broke into small groups, chose a book, and had
a short period to experiment, choose and add a melody to the text and practice. They were not
limited to the songs on the group’s initial list (above). They also decided whether they wanted their book to be a listening experience, echo/participation, or a bit of both.
 |
| Made with Popplet Lite iPad app. |
3) Groups took turns singing their books to the gathering and
received brief feedback.
Note: At the end of the workshop, after introducing
additional strategies, I provided my key to the books they sang. Only a few used the same song solution I used.
*Send me an email,
and I’ll be happy to send you the list of books and partner songs I used for
this exercise: gardengoddess1@comcast.net.
 |
| Books for Piggybacking Melodies |
So – what did they come up with? Here’s a sampling of their song
solutions. A surprise: The go-to song for most of the books turned out to be Skip to My Lou!
Book Piggyback Melody
Me I Am by Jack Prelutsky Going
to Kentucky
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes If
You’re Happy and You Know It
by
Mem Fox
When Winter Comes by Nancy Van Laan Skip
to My Lou
NOW IT’S
YOUR TURN!
Make list of familiar childhood songs, pick a book, see what works,
and make the magic happen!
Join me in December for Part III – a magical, wintry tale
©2014 Brigid Finucane *
847-213-0713 * gardengoddess1@comcast.net
http://prekandksharing.blogspot.com
http://brigidfinucane.blogspot.com
@booksinger1
Blog History
Brigid! What a densely packed and awesome blog you've created here. Thanks for sharing! And are you REALLY the new editor for The Children's Music Network's Pass It On? How lucky for all of us! Whooooooeee!
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