Across Australia some schools have finished for the year and for the others this is the final week before the long summer holiday starts.
With Christmas carols everywhere at present, I noticed a recent facebook post which drew attention to the carol, “Joy To The World”. This carol begins with a descending major scale. The post read something like, “Joy to the world is a major scale” (which also referenced that the carol is often sung in the key of A major).
This got me thinking about other songs which contain whole scales – in other words all the notes of the scale, rather than little sections interspersed with intervals. I cannot think of many; in fact so far I have been able to think of only 3:
1. The afore-mentioned “Joy To The World” (descending major scale)
2. The opening of the canon known as “The Wordless Canon” or sometimes simply “lah ti doh re” (ascending Aeolian Mode / natural minor scale)
3. Bars 3 and 4 of the introduction to Stevie Wonder’s “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” (ascending whole tone scale)
When I asked my year 9 students whether they could think of any, an interesting and lively discussion began. Many students were able to identify fragments of scales in songs that they know – and there was occasional confusion between the various forms of the minor scale. Students offered suggestions and were shouted down by others because their song contained intervals – not pure scales. And so on. It was interesting to see the students engaging with scales in an animated way – such a contrast to the look of benign resignation when we practise singing the set scales for their technical work assessments.
So facebook friends – can you add to my list of songs?
Continue the conversation on facebook and twitter.
