Fall Teaching & Two New Tabs

Fall Teaching, Full Swing

The school year has started for me here in New Hampshire, and along with my regular schedule of private lessons, I also lead middle school classes, organizing groups of 12-15 children to play and sing folk and pop songs using a variety of instruments. Which is to say, busy times!

Two New Folk Songs

However, I had a couple of American traditional songs on my mind during the last week, and took some time this morning to write out music for them and post them to the “Tabs” page.

“Red River Valley” is a cowboy ballad that I’ve written up in three forms: low and high octave first position and low octave second position. The three arrangements require progressively more skill: no bends, then one bend, then two bent notes.

“Skip To My Lou” was mentioned recently on a harmonica newsgroup, as a song Joe Fillisko teaches to beginner classes, so I took the hint and made my own arrangement. Sure enough, it plays great! No bent notes, and it’s a two-chord song, so it would work well as an intermediate tongue-blocking exercise to practice self-accompaniment using the 1 and 5 chords in first position.

Enjoy the tunes, and stay safe during hurricane season here in North America!

Tad