Do Re Mi Fa So, Vol. 1
20 Five-note Melodies for Beginners
1. Beginning
2. The Dream
3. Before Dawn
4. Balloon Ride
5. Happy Years
6. Paperboat Dance
7. Chopin
8. Polish Dance
9. Farewell Hug
10. Hourglass
11. Let’s go dancing!
12. Butterfly Meadow
13. Happy Reunion
14. Melancholic afternoon
15. Start of the Holidays
16. Ladybug Flight
17. Foggy Day
18. Victory
19. Coronation
20. Old Rocking Horse
In March 2024, the recorder teacher Elisabeth Neuser from Ulm asked me for simple pieces for her students. I referred her to my collections Karungi and Jangu Wano. “No, much simpler!” she replied. She was thinking of pieces with a melody consisting of only five notes: g - a - b - c - d or g - a - bflat - c - d. In other words, pieces for real beginners.
The idea inspired me, and over the next three weeks I devoted myself solely to this project and wrote a total of 70 pieces of this kind. My “African” inspired pieces only use the white keys of the piano, i.e. seven notes. Now the aim was to compose the most interesting melodies possible with only five notes. Stylistically, I composed my way through music history, writing in the style of Chopin and Debussy, African and Polish, Spanish and medieval, pop, swing and Viennese waltzes. I also tried to keep the piano accompaniments as playable as possible. I had in mind how a seven-year-old beginner recorder player would be accompanied by her ten-year-old sister.
These are the first twenty pieces! I thank Lucia Guckler, Martina Komínková and Tomoko Otsuki for their wonderful title suggestions, and I thank Yun-Jung Hsiao from Hsinchu, who recorded 27 of the first 40 pieces with me on 25.4.24, she on the recorder, me on the piano, in Meng-Heng Chen's studio, in just three hours. I will publish them one by one on YouTube.