The Importance of Folk Songs for Young Musicians - Tutorials Included

​There is a natural order of language learning - listening, imitating, speaking, reading then writing.  We believe music is most successfully taught the same way and this is why we begin our youngest students with folk songs. Folk songs contain the phonemes of musical language.  

We start with “Hot Cross, Buns.” It’s a simple melody of only three notes but those notes are presented as descending, ascending and repeating.  With three notes, all possible musical movement is realized. Those three notes are an essential piece of musical vocabulary. You’ll find them in “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Amazing Grace,” and nearly every other song in our folk song book.  Our goal is for our students to hear these bits of musical vocabulary, to  recognize them and then to play them at will, from any key. Learning folk songs lays the foundation for a strong musical vocabulary.  We’ve put together a list of ten folk songs that build on each other.  New piano players should start with the second finger only , moving the whole hand to each note. Click on the links for tutorials!
 
Hot Cross Buns
 
Mary Had a Little Lamb
 
Old MacDonald
 
Amazing Grace
 
Ring Around the Rosie
 
Rain, Rain, Go Away
 
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
 
Muffin Man
 
I’m a Little Teapot
 
Itsy Bitsy Spider