Hello, and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman.
You can see that we have a visitor today to our piano lesson. Yes, I brought my friend the frog.
We're going to be learning "Frog in the Middle" on the piano today,
and I brought my frog along to help sing this song with you.
Here's how this song goes: Frog in the Middle, Frog in the Sea,
Frog in the Middle, can't catch me!
Now, will you help me sing the song this time? Frog's going to help sing too.
Here we go. Frog in the Middle, Frog in the Sea.
Frog in the Middle, can't catch me!
Thank you froggie. He says bye. But he's going to be watching.
Let's learn how to play this song,
but first I want you to listen and figure out how the notes are moving.
Remember when we learned "Hot Cross Buns" we talked about how the notes were sometimes
stepping down, and sometimes repeating.
Well in this song we have a new kind of note called skipping.
That's right, sometimes in music notes skip over one another.
Like a hop, like a leap frog.
Now this song has three notes. One is called SO.
And we're going to touch our shoulders every time we hear the note SO.
And it has MI. We are going to touch our waist every time you hear MI
and DO. And we are going to touch our knees every time we hear the note DO.
So maybe we ought to stand up.
We are going to try to sing "Frog in the Middle" and like I said
whenever you hear this high note touch your shoulders
and the middle note is our waist and for the low note touch your knees.
Here we go: Frog in the Middle, Frog in the Sea. Frog in the Middle, can't catch me!
Good job. Now, we're going to do it one more time but this time instead of
the regular words, we are going to sing three special music words called
SO MI and DO.
These music words have been used for hundreds of years
to help people know the patterns of the music.
We call the high note SO, this middle note MI, and the low note DO.
It sounds like this, try to sing along.
SO SO SO MI MI, SO SO SO MI. SO SO SO MI MI DO DO DO.
Remember if you ever need more practice with any of that,
just rewind and try it again.
Now, we're ready to figure out how to move our fingers for these SO MI DO patterns.
Hold up your right hand so it's about level with your face,
and here's how we are going to move our fingers.
SO MI and DO we'll use like I said a skipping pattern.
Our pinkie will play SO and the we are going to skip over this finger to our middle finger
for MI and then we are going to skip over our pointer finger for DO.
SO MI and DO will be the fingers we use for this song.
We call that a skipping pattern.
So, SO will be up here, and it repeats three times like this: SO SO SO MI MI.
Now you try. Here we go: SO SO SO MI MI. Now it's my turn again.
The next pattern is like this: SO SO SO MI. Now you try.
SO SO SO MI. Here's the next pattern.
SO SO SO MI MI DO DO DO. Now you try.
SO SO SO MI MI DO DO DO. Great work.
Now let's try the whole song moving our fingers and singing the regular words again.
Frog in the Middle, Frog in the Sea. Frog in the Middle, can't catch me!
Good work! Now we're ready to try it on the piano keys.
Just like we did in "Five Woodpeckers", I want your five fingers to cover up
C D E F and G starting with your thumb on the note C
assuming you are using your right hand.
So find any C D E F and G on the piano starting with your thumb
and it's going to look like this:
Now, I'm going to sing a pattern and you try to play it and sing it.
Let's start with this one: SO SO SO MI MI. Now you try it with me.
SO SO SO MI MI. Good. Now here's the next pattern:
I'll do it by myself first then let's try it together. SO SO SO MI.
Now this time try it with me. SO SO SO MI.
Now here's the next pattern. It's a little bit longer. I'll do it first.
SO SO SO MI MI DO DO DO. Now try it with me.
SO SO SO MI MI DO DO DO.
Now we're going to try the whole song to "Frog in the Middle".
Here we go.
Frog in the Middle, Frog in the Sea. Frog in the Middle, can't catch me!
Now, if you didn't get that on your first try, you are totally normal.
It takes a lot of practice to get a song just right.
Just rewind it and keep practicing, or push pause and try it on your own.
When you are working on "Frog in the Middle", remember just like we talked about before,
keep your fingers always in a relaxed position when they play.
If they start sticking up a lot, that means you need to slow down
and relax those fingers when they play.
They should always be in a relaxed position and shape
when you play "Frog in the Middle" like this.
[Piano]
Remember, keep your wrist loose and flexible, fingers relaxed and curved.
Have lots of fun practicing. Can't wait to see you at our next lesson.