I Can Live With That

by Teresa Jennings

We're always trying to come up with neat ways for your lower, changing, or changed voices to get in on the action in music class, and we think we've got another goodie here. It's a medium tempo swing tune in which that group (part 3, which is optional) leads the way with the running musical motif. (The line is also doubled in low brass on the recording for reinforcement or in case you don't use part 3 with singers.) Part 2 is also optional, but all three parts together are way cool sounding. To demonstrate this, we have created an a cappella mix for the online extras along with the usual isolated rehearsal parts. Of course, we're pretty fond of the instrumental background on the recording and encourage you to at least listen to it with your students even if you wind up doing the piece a cappella.

The subject of this piece is one anyone can get behind – making healthy choices about eating and exercising. Feeling good is a worthwhile goal, so why not sing about it? Use the song as a point of departure for discussing this with your students, and yes, definitely bring it across the curriculum.

As we have been doing lately with many of our multi-part tunes, we have also created a unison version of this one which you will find on your recording. It's track 13. If singing along with the full three parts is intimidating to your kids, this is the track for you.

Text is taken from Music K-8 magazine.