Pages

Friday, June 16, 2017

Why Miriam had that not-so-sharp pencil at the piano

Miriam has been busy transcribing a song (Down in the Valley) on the piano. She began plucking the tune out by ear and then asked for a blank page of sheet music so she could write it down. She's doing a great job, from my layman's view.

She just finished with the melody and realized that although she decided on the key of C, every F was sharped and her song began and ended on D. At first she thought it might be in the key of G, due to the F sharp, but the D part was boggling her mind.

At ukulele one day, my friend Laura told us that you can usually tell what key a song is in by its ending note. My mind was blown (but that's pretty easy to do when it comes to music theory). Anyway, having remembered this little tidbit, Miriam decided that her song must be in the key of D major—with an F sharp and a C sharp (even though there is no C in the song).

All she's got to figure out now is what her left hand is going to do.

I was not doing this kind of thing when I was seven.

(I also wasn't stabbing people with pencils, but, you know...)


1 comment: