Piano Improvising Sheet Music
Desert Sounds
Piano improvising sheet music for beginner piano, this fun piece is for experimenting with sounds!
Your students will be enchanted by the mystery they can create using a scale with the lowered-second.
Please scroll down the page for the download link.
A song for letting the imagination go
I have been using this song to "free up" the creative imagination in my students, even the older ones for whom this is ridiculously easy... sometimes it is nice to have something extremely simple to coax students out of their shell.
Tabitha in the Netherlands composed this free kids sheet music.
The actual notation is meant AS A GUIDE, like a map or a springboard. Notice how the music is full of short sections of two, four, or eight measures, all of which repeat.
Each section is really a pattern, a pattern for improvising upon. Your students can play it over and over, higher or lower, softer or louder, or turn it into something else.
Tabitha has called this free kids sheet music, "Desert Sounds," because that is what the lowered-second scale reminds us of -- Scheherezade telling the Tales of the Arabian Nights! Aladdin! Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves! (Or maybe just "The Mummy.")
Tabitha says,
"This is something I have done with a late elementary student, who remarked that the last notes of the A harmonic minor scale sounded 'Egyptian'. (E - F - G# - A).
The scale never got practiced that lesson, but we experimented and improvised on 'Egyptian' sounds.
These notes transposed a major second down makes the piece playable in C position. It has no title, students can give their own title, but of course it is supposed to have something to do with deserts, oasis, camels etc."
Please scroll down the page for the download links.
Tabitha says further,
"This piece is not a piece to be played as written, but rather each part (between the repeat signs) can be used and re-used, and put in any order.
Played very high or very low on the piano, or even more fun: with both hands wide apart. And with LOTS of pedal, and RUBATO. A chance to make their own flashy piece.
"An appropriate tempo could be quarter note at about 240, or whatever the student can handle.
Students get to taste a bit of more advanced techniques like rolled chords, tremolo, trills.
Each section can be demonstrated and practiced during the lesson, so that the score serves more as a reminder at home of what ideas can be used.
I did it all by rote that time [with the late elementary student], and of course the next week very little was left of it, he remembered only one part ... so we did it again...
You can play for several minutes on end, once you get the feel of it.
My 9-year-old student was making up images as he was playing, ringing little bells of the camels, sand storm, pyramids, etc."
Some of my own students have been having a blast with this piano improvising sheet music. (Others, more timid, need to be coaxed to experiment.)
I like to introduce it by placing my right hand on a C pentascale and saying, "This is how we make a 'happy' sound -- the major scale. How can we make it sad?"
Because my students know how to turn major into minor, they will point to my "3" finger or play with their own hand the C minor pentascale, changing the "E" to an "Eb."
Then I say, "Okay -- Desert Sounds is neither of those scales. Watch."
Then slowly, with emphasis on the Db, I play the C pentascale with the lowered "2" finger. (The scale goes "C-Db-E-F-G-F-E-Db-C.")
It is interesting to watch their eyes as I slowly play the scale, then linger on the last Db... before playing the final C.
It is as if they are seeing camels far away, crossing a desert horizon. They can hardly wait to play the scale themselves!
Then I have them move to the right side of the bench, and we proceed through the song with them ONLY on the right hand, and me playing in the bass, both parts.
It is very fun. If there is time, we switch places and I have them take only the bass line, to prove to them how EASY it is, and how easy it is to give a different feeling to the music by playing LOW or HIGH or LOUD or SOFT.
Thank you for this very fun, useful and unique free kids sheet music, Tabitha!
The pdf link for the sheet music:
Download free kids sheet music "Desert Sounds"
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About the Author
Hi, I'm Dana! (Say that like "Anna".) I'm the owner of Music-for-Music-Teachers.com, and a newer site, SingTheBibleStory.com.
Like some of you, I've been playing the piano since early childhood, and have added a few other instruments along the way, plus an interest in arranging and composing music.
You can find out more about me and the reason for this website at my About Me page.
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