Christmas Recital - Bell song

PDF link to this file

Song Source

Spring 2019 Recital notes

The "stage"

(The living room)

The Program:

As usual, our songs came from an assortment of places: books, YouTube tutorials, and Musescore.

A few I had to "create" using some version I found on Musescore.com, which I then edited to our liking. The end result is so different from the original that the version online would not be very helpful if you wanted to play it. So I have uploaded these to our

Purchased books:
Peanuts Song - Skatin' (also edited for length - I skipped to 2nd ending/coda, etc)
A Million Dreams (we edited for length and cut out quite a bit)

Songs from Musescore we edited (the original version):
Le Festin'
Pollyanna
Rewrite the Stars

These are links to the file on my drive:
(Songs we edited a lot from some other free arrangement)
Touch the Sky
Disney Medley
Under the Sea

These came from YouTube tutorials and I had to type up what I learned to play so I could teach it to the children:
Beyblades Burst Turbo Theme Song   (YouTube Tutorial)
This is Me   (YouTube Tutorial)
Let it Go*  (YouTube Tutorial)

*I made a few versions of this as I went along so that our notes were digitized onto the sheet music for easy reprinting:
This one has all finger numbers labeled.
This one has some of our lesson notes and some finger numbers labeled.
This one has all of our notes and all finger numbers labeled.

PDF

I found an already made melody, colored the notes in musescore, then made a posterboard for easy reading by a group.

To practice this at home, each child got a sheet like this one:

Well, we survived another recital year!
(I'm not really sure why this picture is so grainy?)

Christmas Recital 2018

Link to the Youtube Videos Playlist

This post is to give me an easy quick lookup for where all the sheet music came for this recital.

You're welcome for the links, should you want them.

Individual songs sheet music:

 (if publicly available):

Natalie played "The First Noel"

https://www.pianosongdownload.com/The%20First%20Noel.pdf

Carolyn played "The Christmas Song" (Chestnuts roasting)

I simplified some old sheet music we have, but it looks similar to this one:

https://sheetdownload.com/Nat-King-Cole/The-Christmas-Song/12245

Kaitlyn played "Deck the Halls" (jazz)

https://defordmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/deck-the-halls-piano-solo.pdf

Seth played "Joy to the World" out of one of our easy music books.

Alee played "Home for the Holidays" that was from one of our music books and I just simplified it for her and added finger numbers and colors all over it to help her learn it!

My beginner students:

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3M6MoweDqJ5amdmOW96SE16RFk/view

from this site:

http://pianoteacherresource.blogspot.com/2012/11/free-christmas-sheet-music.html

Away in a Manger:

https://susanparadis.com/wp_susan/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/AwayInAMangerTrad.pdf

Jolly Old St. Nicholas:

http://gmajormusictheory.org/Freebies/Level1/1JollyOld/1JollyOld.pdf

.

Up on the Housetop:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3M6MoweDqJ5amdmOW96SE16RFk/view

from this site:

http://pianoteacherresource.blogspot.com/2012/11/free-christmas-sheet-music.html

ENSEMBLES

One arrangement that was fun was our our entire* family playing Carol of the Bells.

(*The baby is excluded from the bells performance, much to his disappointment!)

If you would like the bells sheet to this, you can download it below.

Download as pdf

These bells are an accompaniment to this score of Carol of the Bells (with violin and piano):

https://www.8notes.com/scores/7378.asp

Carolyn (violinist) requested too late that she would have liked for it to have been in a different key. (I would have been happy to accommodate this as 3 sharps isn't my favorite, but I had already made the bell sheet.)

Also, my family preferred to read directly from the sheet music, so I did edit that PDF by adding these same colored circles above each measure, but as that arrangement is not my work, I do not have the rights to upload my family's colored on copy as a public resource.

(I suppose you could cut and paste - literally! - the above onto a printed copy of the song though if you also prefer to read along.)

Ukulele duet of "Let it Snow" by my twins Kaitlyn and Natalie

https://ukutabs.com/m/misc-traditional/let-it-snow/?transpose=+7#point

Our quintet of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" was put together from some free scores on 8notes.com - They're all 3 the same score but written for different instruments. We doubled up on the melody so it could be heard over the tuba.

(String Quartet) https://www.8notes.com/scores/11313.asp

Violin and Cello came from here, as did Viola, but we used violin 1's part (melody) for both violin and viola. I typed up the part for my violist in musescore to put it into alto clef.

(Wind Quintet) https://www.8notes.com/scores/11315.asp

Clarinet in Bb part is here (same as viola part on other score)

(Brass quartet) https://www.8notes.com/scores/11314.asp

Use Oboe part (but transposed to lower octave in bass clef) for our Euphonium

Sheet music from our Patriotic recital - May 2017

This post contains sheet music for a variety of patriotic songs - on several instruments - piano, cello, violin, bells, recorder, and guitar.

I realized when I opened the blog that I haven't posted in about 1 year, so let this by my annual post for 2017. (with baby #6 due in a few weeks, that's probably very likely to be true) :)

We held a memorial day recital this year. The first 5 songs were songs from the branches of the armed services - each child was given a lead sheet* and taught about chords and keys enough to be able to arrange the left hand. (*The youngest got a lead sheet modified into a piece for beginner - middle C hand position.)

The second set of 7 songs were duets arranged by either someone in the family - or just found  online. I will give references for those along with the sheet music. (Because the online versions were often very small and hard to read as a duet, we re-typed to make them bigger.)

I'm posting our recital program with references to songs we used, photos and pdf's of the sheet music we found, arranged, or created, and videos of us performing them. I hope that someone out there looking for sheet music or ideas for your beginning performers might enjoy this post and appreciate the time I put into getting it all organized and posted.

Here is our recital program:

Below are image files of each song, and below each song is a link to the pdf version on google drive.

Three lead Sheets came from Music for Music Teachers.

The titles below will have a link for each individual song I got from that site.

The others I just googled and can't remember where I found them? (I typed them all up - even the ones I was able to find from the Music Teachers site - so that when it was time to add in my kids' arrangements, I already had the file ready in MuseScore.)

The Solos

The Army Goes Rolling Along

The Army Goes Rolling Along (PDF)

Arranged by my 12 year old daughter

The Marine's Hymn (for beginner level)

The Marine's Hymn (PDF)

Transposed from lead sheet to the key of G for my 7 year old daughter to be able to play.

Anchors Aweigh

Anchors Aweigh (PDF)

Arranged by my 10 year old daughter

Official US Air Force Song

(I'm not sure where I got this lead sheet from?? So the link is to an armed forces medley lead sheet, but I'm sorry I can't give credit to the original?)

US Air Force Song (PDF)

Arranged by my 10 year old daughter

Semper Paratus (Coast Guard)

(I didn't actually find a lead sheet for this one but rather made one from actual sheet music I found; I needed all 4 older children to have the opportunity to create/arrange.), so the link above is to my google drive with the lead sheet I put together.

Semper Paratus (PDF)

Arranged by my 14 year old son

Now the duets!

For this part, the PDF files are linked in the title rather than below the images.

God Bless America (PDF)

(piano/recorder)

 This is the recorder only sheet. I just typed up one I found online (from Katie's recorder site) so that I could add the piano part (which I arranged).

America the Beautiful (PDF)

(violin and piano)

The piano part to this is a little tricky (and I went through several different piano accompaniment arrangements, as I kept having to simplify it for my 7 year old). The violin has the melody and the piano has the harmony, and that makes it a challenge for young piano players who want to hear a song they know. 

The violin part came from violinsheetmusic.org

I've listed 2 piano accompaniment versions below, the second one being the easier of the 2 (and the one we decided to use for the recital.) The link above has the score, the violin part, and the easier piano part in 3 pages. The violin original you'll have to click the link to the free violin sheet music site to access.

The "score" (for the easier piano version)

Yankee Doodle

(cello/piano)

I actually found a duet already made for this one (yea!) It came from 8notes.com

It was small and had no words (picture above), so I re-typed it in MuseScore to add words and make it easier to read (picture below). And then my son went and added to it!

 The only thing we did was to expand the arrangement to include the part of the song not listed.

We looked up the chord markings on a guitar site, and my daughter (age 10) just added chords to the additional part my son tacked on. (One chord per measure so it was a calmer rhythm and featured the solo.)

This is the 2-page version of what the pianist played.

(To be honest, she just had the first page as shown above, the first image, with the words to Seth's added part written below and chord symbols above the words. I typed this for the sake of the blog posting, so I'm not certain if the notes listed are the exact ones she played, but those are the chords she played.)

Battle Hymn of the Republic

(piano/guitar)

(I had recommended my daughter just play out of the hymnbook, but she decided it was too hard. I suggested she just play the melody and the parts of the left hand that she could. She simplified the song and typed it up in MuseScore herself.)

My husband just used the guitar chord markings and accompanied her.

Dixie

(piano duet)

This one was really fun to play. I did find an arrangement online, but it was just an arrangement for a solo, so used that piece to turn it into a duet. 

(I know the melody line came from whatever I found online, but I can't find the original I downloaded, so I can't remember what parts were original and what parts I made? I think I just used their left hand part to figure out the chords and then tossed it and added both the piano1 left hand and the piano2 both hands.)

America (My Country 'tis of Thee)

(recorder/guitar)

The original recorder part came from the same as the other recorder song above - Katie's site.

We found and added guitar chords (I think my husband altered a few, but he's not here as I type this to tell me which he corrected, deleted, or added.)

Here's the original:

Here's what we typed up:

The Star-Spangled Banner

The piano part came from G Major Music Theory (I love his site), so I'll let you click on that link to take you to his site. The above link (on title) will get you the pdf on my google drive for the bells part shown below.

The bells part, I arranged to match his piano sheet music.

The part at the end got a little tricky, so the girls that played our bells simplified the second to last measure by leaving out some notes/chords. (The coloring of the bells matches "hobby lobby" bells from what I have found online. I'm not sure where exactly our bells came from since they were a gift?)

If you'd like, you can watch the entire recital (live performance broadcast on YouTube). The above videos are just the best recording (between rehearsal or recital).

I hope someone looking for patriotic songs for their young performers makes use of these! We had fun putting this together and performing. (If I missed giving someone credit, send me a message and I will fix that. Although, most of what we found we altered enough that it probably isn't stepping on toes anymore.)