Lookin' For A Valentine

by Teresa Jennings

This easy country folk song has a couple of things going for it that you might find useful. First, it's obviously a song for Valentine's Day. It's quite pleasant to listen to and sing. The recording has layers of acoustic guitars, including a 12-string that strums, and a mandolin that plays ad libbed solos throughout. Just makes you want to smile when you hear it.

Second though, it's possibly a piece to use for your beginning guitar students. There are three chords that can be played using the four string versions: G, C, and D. On the piano/vocal part, you will see the guitar part in cue size. The rhythms indicated are very simple, but you don't have to stick to them. More advanced students might prefer to add more complex strumming, even similar to what our guitarist does on the recording. Either way will work. To help your students learn their parts, we have extracted the guitar part with chord diagrams and created a TAB part as well, in case you prefer to use that. (See details for accessing in the box on page 80.) On the recording you will hear that the drum set-up lasts for two whole measures. That's so that if you do use your own guitars, they know when to enter in measure one.

Text is taken from Music K-8 magazine.