View RSS Feed

davewerden

Video: If I Only Had a Brain - Dave Werden

Rate this Entry
Here is the latest in my series of videos that might be called "Songs that Are Easy Enough for Anyone to Play, but Are Good Musical Practice." (I need to work on that title a bit, though!)

I'm sure most of you will know the song from the classic movie "The Wizard of Oz" where this song is sung by the scarecrow. As with some of the others in this series, the style is lighter than many euphonium players typically attempt. Yet it is a very important side of musical style to develop. And playing the style correctly is actually a small musical challenge.

The core figure throughout the song is a dotted-eighth-sixteenth rhythm, which is probably best played in a swing style (more like triplets). If one is not used to playing this type of pattern there can be an issue with coordination. Playing straight eighths is easy enough. And playing a true dotted rhythm is pretty easy, because most players work to make the sixteenth as quick as their technique can handle. But with the swing approach, one needs to give attention to the placement of the "short note" in each beat. The tongue and fingers have to be accurate and move together, but it absolutely must not sound labored. Sometimes making something sound easy is difficult!

The arrangement I used is available here:
http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic...ppn=MN0099694&

If you are not comfortable transposing on the fly from a piano score, then simply purchase one copy to print in F and one to print in G (which you would read as treble clef euphonium music). I added a couple of quick upward scales, which you can easily figure out if you wish, and also doubled the piano at the very end, which is also each to see in the music.

The performers are:
Dave Werden, euphonium
Sara Brunk, piano

Comments