Welcome Home

The concept for this song was born when we heard that many of our troops might be coming home in the spring of 2004 from overseas. We had hoped that having a song of welcome would be just the thing to make any ceremony perfect. But even if you don't have need for the song for that particular purpose, you might find yourself needing it sometime, somewhere, for something else. It's a very sentimental and heartfelt message, to be sure, but it's written in such a way as to be useful in general circumstances. Feel free to make it more personal, if you wish. Alter the lyrics to include someone's name, for example. Or have students hold up photos of the guests of honor. That sort of thing.

We would like to stress that even though the piece has three parts indicated, it is written for unison, 2-part, or 3-part mixed voices. In other words, it will absolutely work in unison (which is how we figure most schools will use it). It will also work with just parts 1 and 2, or with all three parts. The third part is written in bass clef for your lower, changing, and changed voices. The solo at the beginning and at the end is also optional. For the recording, we chose a young man, Kevin Colvin, to sing the solo.

We're trying something new and different with the parts on this one. Typically, to teach parts, we recommend isolating the lines and playing them over and over on a keyboard while students read and sing along. This is a tried and true method and the one we use in the recording studio. However, we thought it might be helpful to you and your students to hear the parts being sung in an isolated manner to sing along with. Consequently, we put two versions of "Welcome Home" on our website: one with part 2 being featured and one with part 3 being featured. These are free MP3 files and are available to anyone who needs them. Since this is an experiment, your feedback would be most appreciated. Our web address is MusicK8.com You will find these under Downloads, as well as under Volume 14, Number 4 (touch the "Graphics and Extras" button).