Although we do not usually start students on guitar until age 7, we have 5 and 6-year-old students participate with singing and dancing. They can learn songs with sing-along recordings, and as shown below, they can develop their reading skills in the process. The sing-along recordings are limited to the 3-string guitar and vocal parts.
Sarah LeMieux is the vocalist, and David Mills is playing the Loog Guitar parts. In the future we will add keyboard and percussion parts for the songs in the DoSo Song Library.
To make the video full screen, start the video then click on [ ] in the lower right corner of the screen.
When Analysse King was 10-years-old, her parents had a baby boy. Analysse went to David Mills, her music teacher at the Boys and Girls Club, and said she would like to write a song about a baby kangaroo.
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The “Sloop John B” is a folk song from the Bahamas written more than 100 years ago. Americans were introduced to the song in a book of folk songs compiled by poet Carl Sandburg in 1927. The song became well known world-wide from a recording by the Beach Boys in the 1960’s.
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“Vande Mataram” comes from a 19th Century poem within a novel by Bakim Chandra. In the early 20th Century Tagore set the poem to music. In the 1960’s Susanto Banerjee simplified the chorus for young children to sing. With encouragement from Banerjee, David Mills adapted the chorus and added English lyrics for young children in the US. To learn more about this story go to www.DoSoMusic.org and click on “Finding Vande Mataram” on the home page.
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For teachers and parents: song books with instructional tips will soon be available online. If you would like to see the instructional pages for these three songs, send an email to: David Mills 777doso@gmail.com