Star of the County Down for Beginning Piano
This fun Irish song, Star of the County Down, comes with ideas for using piano chords, and is great beginner piano music. Some songs spread like wild-fire through a music studio, and this is one of those pieces! It began with some local fiddlers playing it at a few recitals about town, then I wrote it up for my pianists in several versions, and now it just won't go away. I even had a student -- a boy -- choose it over BATMAN recently!
Free kids' sheet music Star of the County Down for beginner piano It looks very simple, but after kids have learned the melody, we don't leave it there. It becomes a duet. I pencil in the chord symbols --Am, C, G-- (see the graphic below) above the melody, and tell them to play open chords on beat 1 of each measure. Like directing traffic, I play the melody with my right hand and conduct their chords with my left hand. 
Beginner piano sheet music with chord symbols Then I tell them to play TWO chords per measure. That's even more fun. 
Then I say, "Okay, now we're going to play chords with both hands--Left, Right, Left, Right." This is REALLY fun. 
All of these changes are notated for them with only slash marks and the letters "L R L R" for left and right hands. Now and then a very careful student (generally a teenager) will want me to write out an example of the first few chords, and then they're happy. Younger kids will plunge right in, although they may also forget how to do it the first week at home. That is plenty for one, two, or even several lessons. I wait until they are comfortable and able to keep the tempo up, then I say, "Now I want you to make an introduction for the song! Here's how..." and I instruct them to play those same Am and G chords in a rhythmic pattern that makes a singer want to jump in and start. This is an important skill to learn, this sense of musical impetus or urgency, and any musician who plays in a group needs to figure out how to make it happen. Here's what I tell them..."Left, right-right, left, right, left, RIGHT, RIGHT." And here is what it looks like in standard notation, if I were to write it out for them...
Quite without any urging or even, initially, knowledge on my part, three of my young students put together a version of Star of the County Down for a state technology-in-the-schools contest. They called their new version of the song, with its new words, Star of the Slippery Dock, and made a video of it. They won first place in their category, and garnered several prizes for their classroom, including $500.00! I tell you this not to boast of their musical prowess (I had absolutely no hand in it), but to attest to the drawing power of this song!
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