Do Re Mi for ukulele

When I read that Christopher Plummer had died, the song “Do Re Mi” from The Sound of Music rang in my head. In the movie, Plummer played the widower Captain Von Trapp with seven mischievous children. “Do Re Mi” is an earworm that taught us, if not drilled into us, the alphabet of music. What a perfect application of a major scale for my music theory students! And a great example of pluck and strum for ukulele players!

There’s only one caveat to note. Julie Andrews, as Maria the governess, did not sing it in C major, as we’d expect.

Why should it be in C? Do re mi refers to the first three notes of any major scale. For that matter, it could be in any key. A singer would natural choose a key that covers a pitch range most comfortable and powerful for his or her voice.

In the movie, Julie Andrews sings it in the key of Bb, a formiddable key for beginning ukulele players. The barred chord of Bb is not impossible. In fact, it could be good practice to have to play it most frequently (more than any other chord) in the song in this key.

Sitting on the hills that are alive in Austria, she plucks the outer strings of her guitar. Presumably she must have tuned it up from E to F because her left hand is simply holding the neck. Playing the Fs an octave apart provides not only a simple accompaniment but also a steady beat like a metronome.

To sing and play along to the original clip in the movie, we’d have to play it in the key of Bb. Both guitarists and ukulele players can read from the Ultimate Guitar Tab song sheet and play along to the original soundtrack. For completeness, check out the full lyrics.

For beginners (in any instrument – piano, guitar, ukulele), C major is a lot easier to play and comprehend because it has no sharps or flats. What does it look like in C?

First of all, you don’t need a low G ukulele to pluck the melody. Secondly, you could get away with using just three chords of C, F, and G7 for most of the song.

Fingerstyle ukulele players, also known as “pluckers” can pluck the melody notes of the entire song with just two fingers, alternating index and middle fingers of the plucking hand.

For the non-beginner, it’s fun to follow a ukulele play along video which requires a lot more chords to make it sound right. The chords are different from Doctor Uke’s song sheet. Is it still Julie Andrews’ voice?

“Do Re Mi” is an excellent example of a musical technique called word painting. The words are painted by the music itself, in this case, “do” is do, “re” is re, etc. We will see more examples on Thursday 25th February 2021 in the free Three Chord Thursday song session in Zoom. The date of 2/25/2021 was chosen because it’s the 180th birthday of the French painter Renoir.

There are so many ways to use this song in teaching.

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In the time of Covid, you might want to sing and playalong to a parody, such as the one below, which started a Covid parody of do re mi movement, in the original key of Bb major.

Since then there have been many more covers of this particular Covid-19 parody.