Gotta BAG These Leaves

by Teresa Jennings

This piece started life as a BAG tune - that is, a recorder tune that focuses on B, A, and G for beginning players. Then the notion of doing a play on the word "bag" in tandem with a seasonal song about bagging autumn leaves seemed like a natural departure. Making it humorous by going with an over-the-top melodramatic approach musically was the next thought, thereby making it also a good candidate to use in the revue, Just For Fun! We could have stopped there, but the chord progressions worked so nicely for beginning guitars to plunk along, we couldn't resist adding them as well. So you have it: An amusing song about a seasonal topic that uses beginning recorders and guitars. We even include the extracted parts for the recorder and the guitar right in this issue.

The key to making this work for your singers, is the extreme angst over an inconsequential task. Our singers really got into it, as you can hear on the recording. While we encourage overdoing the emotional content, make sure they don't get so carried away that they're not a unified choir anymore. Unless you decide to use it for a soloist. In that case, let them sell it however it works best for comedic results.

Text is taken from Music K-8 magazine.